After The Fall
by notmanos
Summary: An angel with a grudge against Castiel sends Dean into another dimension, where the attempt to stop the Apocalypse failed, and the Earth is transforming into Hell. Dean finds himself teaming up with an unlikely ally and trying to survive, while Cas and Sam struggle to hunt down the renegade angel and find Dean before he's killed - or worse.
1. Survive

_**1 – Survive**_

Castiel had seen enough murdered angels – and had killed so many himself – that he had a hard time feeling anything when he saw their bodies. But since it was one of the few surviving members of his garrison, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret.

Eli had been a good soldier, but now he was laid out on the roof of a skyscraper in Tokyo, the shadow of his wings burned beneath him, a neat hole from an angel blade in his chest. The full moon overhead and the glaring city lights made it a surprisingly well lit scene. His vessel had been a young Japanese man who liked white shirts and dark suits, but now that white shirt was soaked red.

Hannah, who had called him here, held out a piece of paper towards him. She had never stopped looking somber. "He had this in his hand."

Castiel took it, curious. Written on it, in familiar script, were the words: _I have not forgotten, Castiel. I will take away what you treasure most, and then I'll take your life._

"Do you know who did this?" she wondered.

It took him a moment, but yes, he recognized the writing and the sentiment. "Simeon," he said. "I thought he was dead." Or maybe he just hoped he was.

Simeon had been one of his lieutenants when he fought against Raphael. He had been a loyal, good soldier, until he discovered Castiel had actually killed Rachel, and then he rebelled and went missing. Castiel hadn't realized Simeon and Rachel had been close, but he subsequently learned they had been, perhaps blasphemously so. Castiel assumed he'd died in the subsequent heavenly upheaval, as he had never encountered him since. But it was equally possible he simply hid in another dimension. If he'd hidden on Earth, he'd managed to do so better than any other angel he knew of. Castiel was sure he'd have found him if he had. Sins of the past. It was a shame Eli had to pay. He'd had nothing to do with Castiel's faithlessness or insanity.

Hannah folded up the note, and it disappeared. "Do you know what he's after?"

A very good question. "I don't know." What did he treasure exactly? The Earth, humanity. These targets seemed too large for Simeon. It was still possible. Claire? How would Simeon know about her? Or anything Castiel valued? He must have had allies among the angels still.

"I'll get the word out he's wanted," Hannah said.

He nodded a thanks, and knew he didn't deserve that kind of help. Eli deserved justice, though. He was an innocent. Unlike Castiel. "Let me know if you find him."

Where to go now? He wasn't actually sure where Claire was right now. Sam and Dean might know, or might be able to help him.

So he sent himself to where they were, walking from a Tokyo rooftop to a roadside motel somewhere in America … Michigan, if he was correct. But Castiel knew instantly something was wrong.

The room was empty. One of the beds looked rumpled, but otherwise it looked unoccupied. Looking around, he found one of Sam's travel bags hidden beside the made bed, but that was it. Were they just settling in?

As he was puzzling over this, he heard the scrape of a key in the lock, and turned to find Sam coming in the door. Sam jumped slightly upon seeing him. "Cass, what are you doing here?"

"I came to ask for your help."

Castiel assumed Dean would follow him in, but he didn't. In fact, Sam looked towards the rumpled bed, and asked, "Where's Dean?"

"I don't know. He wasn't here when I arrived."

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes, instantly reaching for his phone. "If he found that vampire nest and went after it on his own, I'm gonna kill him."

"How is he?"

Sam grimaced as he pressed a button on his phone. Dean claimed the Mark of Cain wasn't influencing him, but it clearly was, and it was a battle he was losing in slow increments. Dean being Dean, he was refusing to admit this, and refusing to ask for help, leaving both Sam and Castiel in the position of trying to find a way to help him that wouldn't make him angrier. This was, to quote Sam, a no win scenario. Something was going to have to be done, but what and when was still to be determined. "Hanging on by his fingernails and pretending he isn't." Sam's brow furrowed in confusion to something he heard on the phone. "What the hell?" Sam quickly punched up another number.

"What is it?"

"I'm getting a recording saying the number is out of service. That –" he cut off suddenly, and looked at his phone as though it was genuinely vexing him. "Now it says his other phone is also out of service."

Castiel suddenly had an awful thought. No. "When did you leave Dean?"

Sam shrugged. "Just ten minutes ago. He was taking a nap, and I needed some fresh air." Castiel understood that this was euphemistic. Sam was under strain as well. Living with Dean as of late had been trying. It was difficult to be with a person who was falling apart, and yet refusing to admit they were falling apart. The Mark was gaining a greater hold on Dean every day, in spite of his refusal to admit it. "What did you need help with, Cass?"

"We may have the same problem. Simeon, an angel who's decided he wants revenge, threatened to go after someone close to me. I thought he meant Claire. What if he meant Dean?"

Sam's eyes widened in alarm. "What would he do with him?"

Good question. Even with the Mark, if Simeon wanted to kill Dean as he had killed Eli, he could have easily accomplished it. So what else could he have done with him?

Castiel almost shuddered to think. If Simeon wanted him to suffer, he might make Dean suffer too.

* * *

Somewhere Else

It took Dean a moment to remember where he was, and what was going on.

He sat up in the driver's seat, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and trying to work out a crick in his neck. The air in the truck was stuffy and stale, and altogether too warm. Then again, hell on Earth. Gonna be kind of warm.

For a single second, Dean thought everything was wrong, and then realized yes, of course everything was wrong. Everything had been wrong since that day in the cemetery, when they tried to cage Lucifer and Michael. The day he lost Cass and Bobby and Sam; all his remaining family.

It really would have been better if Lucifer beat him to death. He almost did, before Sam regained himself for one second and stopped. Then Michael showed back up, wearing Adam, and attacked him immediately. Sam was gone, and Lucifer was back. Dean was still not sure how he didn't die, except both Lucifer and Michael didn't want him to. They couldn't torment him as much if he were dead.

So Dean did the only thing he could do as the slow Apocalypse occurred: he ran, trying to put as much distance between him and Michael and Lucifer as possible. He intended to save as many people as he could, but there was that old saying about good intentions and hell that was sadly true.

He kind of wished Zachariah was still alive, so he would know how fucking wrong he was. He thought Heaven could win the battle, but from what Dean could tell, Hell was winning/had won. The roiling red sky was a nice spooky touch, but the real giveaway was the sheer number of demons, and the fact that Croatoan virus was running rampant through the few humans left. There were days when Dean didn't encounter anyone, demon possessed, infected, or somehow unharmed. In fact, when was the last time he encountered a regular human? He tried to remember, and couldn't. The days had started blurring together, to the point that he wasn't sure when that doomed attempt to stop the Apocalypse happened. Two months ago? A year ago? Two years? Could have been decades for all he knew. It felt like an eon.

Dean was really tired of all of this. There were a couple of times when he tried to stop, when he tried to let the demons kill him (he couldn't go the Croatoan route; he knew how dangerous he'd be if he turned into some mindless weapon), but some kind of reflex, muscle memory, kicked in and wouldn't let him die. His body wasn't ready to let go just yet. He was close, though. He was sure one more week and his reflexes wouldn't even work right anymore.

Dean grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the floor and took a couple of swallows, just to get the dust out of his throat. He was parked on the side of the road, what could have been a part of I-5, but he was no longer sure what direction he was going in anymore. He hadn't seen another running car in weeks. He longed for the Impala, but that too had been lost during the fruitless Apocalypse fight. Just another member of his family gone.

The air in the stolen truck's cab now stunk of the hex bags he had on the dashboard and passenger seat. Despite the smell, they were probably the only thing that kept him from getting snatched up by Lucifer – and Michael, if he was still alive. And he was working on faith that these super charged hex bags Sam taught him to put together even worked on angels as powerful as them. He didn't know. Maybe the fact that he wasn't in their clutches yet was proof.

Before he got out of the truck, he made sure he had one in his pocket, and double checked to make sure his gun was fully loaded. Dean picked up his favorite machete from the passenger seat and got out, to try and figure out where he was, and where he could go. He'd have used a GPS, if any of that shit even worked anymore. But it didn't, because that was too damn easy.

The air felt dense with humidity, and he'd noticed nowadays there was almost always a hint of sulfur in the air. It was a smell that refused to go away. He got a beer out of the cooler in the back, and a map he'd taken from the last gas station he'd hit.

Dean had made marks on the map of where he was sure he had been, so he had some general idea of where he was and where he was headed. The problem was, he'd skipped a couple of days. His stomach rumbled, and he wondered if that was when he last ate too. Maybe. He didn't have much of an appetite anymore.

His worst fear was becoming the last surviving Winchester, the only one left standing. He'd hoped to die before that came to pass. He had a terrible feeling Lucifer had figured that out too.

Had he ever felt so alone or so useless in his life? He tried not to think about it anymore, because that had led to too many blackout drunks, when he was lucky not to have been killed. Although once Dean came to surrounded by bodies, and the terrible realization that he had somehow killed them all. He hoped they were all demons or Croatoan victims. Honestly, considering the states they were in, he had no way of telling for sure.

The road was desolate. He'd parked on a soft shoulder, which led down to a shallow valley full of scrub, mostly grass and Scotch broom. There was an overturned car down there too, scorched and already graffitied with CRO. The signs that some people were trying to warn others was a heartening touch, but Dean wondered how old that warning was. Somewhere outside of Portland he'd come across signs that some survivors had formed a camp and were trying to hold out, but when he got there, all he found was bodies. It wasn't clear if demons had overrun the camp or someone got exposed to Croatoan and that was it. In the end, it didn't matter.

For some reason, he looked at his arm, and expected to see a mark there. What kind of mark? It was a weird idea, and out of his head now. His arm looked fine, except for a bruise where he'd blocked a punch.

Dean looked around for mile markers, something, but could only see an overturned minivan up ahead, and the crushed remains of some compact that got accordioned by the larger, heavier vehicle. The only problem with driving nowadays was you'd come across these huge pile ups, sometimes cutting off all access unless you were on foot. How there could be traffic after the apocalypse was astounding, especially since there seemed to be no one driving but him.

He had just decided he was a particularly stark part of Northern California, since it wasn't hot enough to be Nevada, when he heard a sound like a dead leaf scraping against asphalt. Only there was no wind to speak of.

Dean had his gun out and turned towards the noise, which came from the direction of the wreck. "I know you're there," he said. "If you don't wanna die, come out slowly with your hands up."

"Dean, Dean, Dean," a familiar female voice said. It was drawling, mocking, and his heart sunk as soon as he placed it. Meg. She walked around the SUV with three big, muscular guys with black eyes. "I'll hand it to you, Forrest, you made a real game out of it. I figured after you lost your brother you'd collapse in a sobbing heap, but you managed to put one foot in front of the other like a good little rodent. But you had to know the cover wasn't gonna last forever, right?"

"Are you here to gloat?" She was on Lucifer's side. She bet on the right horse, and now she was even more insufferably smug.

She grinned, and it never hit her dead black eyes. "Oh please. When you win everything, there's no need to gloat. Besides, there's almost no one left to brag to. Did you know that? Have you put that together yet? You're almost the last man on Earth. How does that feel?"

"Eat me, bitch." She was just saying that to be an asshole, right? There's no way he could be the last human on Earth. There had to be more somewhere.

She smirked, and two other very big demons joined her. Her entourage. Where the hell had they come from? "Maybe later, once the boss is finished with you. I bet all that beer means you're well marinated."

He still had Ruby's knife, tucked in his jeans. He could drop the machete and go for it, but he felt the machete might have some uses too. Couldn't kill demons with it, but you could maim the fuck out of them. And these days, maiming demons was pretty much his only source of joy. "Six on one. Think you have enough guys, Meg? Maybe you wanna call in a few more."

She chuckled, which was a surprisingly mirthless sound. "Look at you, still hanging on to your arrogance. Good for you. When you've lost everything else, why not, right?"

One of her goons started across the road, and Dean shot him in the eye. Nope, wouldn't kill him, but taking out an eye pissed demons off no end, and he was not disappointed by the roar of rage that came from the goon as he bent over and put a hand to the bloody hole where his right eye used to be. "You fucking son of a whore!" he snapped. "I'll make you eat your own entrails for that!"

He shot at the demon behind him, who ducked, and was about to try for Meg, who was just looking amused, when he realized someone was sneaking up behind him. He turned, swinging the machete, and was gratified to chop the arm off the demon trying to get the drop on him. He howled in pain, but still managed to charge Dean, ramming his shoulder into his midsection and slamming him against the truck.

His breath left his lungs in a rush, but Dean still had a point blank opportunity and wasn't about to lose it. He brought the machete down and sliced through the demon's spine, but the blade got wedged in his thick neck muscles, so he only cut half way through. Still, the demon staggered back, trying to pull the machete out, his head flopping forward uselessly. The demon jumped out of the body in a gush of black smoke, because while not dead, the vessel wasn't of much use now. Dean shot the demon behind him at point blank range, taking out his left eye, before the body of the first had hit the ground.

A punch like granite in the back of the head made Dean drop the gun and fall to one knee, as the demon who had come up behind him grabbed his right arm and hauled him back to his feet. Dean reached under his shirt, pulled out Ruby's knife, and stabbed the demon in the stomach. He wasn't a great southpaw, but the beauty of Ruby's knife was you didn't need to be super accurate with it.

They were trying to dogpile him, use their superior numbers against him. He was taking blind shots in the body and the face, and with the crush of bodies fighting back was near impossible. He still tried, though. He stabbed blindly when he could, kicked whatever, and it felt like he kneed someone in the head. He made one demon die courtesy of Ruby's knife, but he was simply overwhelmed. There were too many demons, and he couldn't find enough space to move. His consciousness was dissolving into black stars that exploded across the field of his vision, and he wondered if now would be the time his body would stop fighting for a life so empty.

He was thrown face down on the asphalt, struggling for breath as the pressure on his back was insane, and he was currently drowning a little in his own blood. Maybe they were supposed to take him alive, but no one said undamaged. They put plastic tie handcuffs on him, and Meg hauled him up to a sitting position against the truck. She grinned and straddled his legs, caressing his bruised cheek. "See? We wouldn't have had to damaged your face, Ken doll, if you just went along quietly. Do you feel all manly for having resisted the inevitable?"

He spit in her face. It was mostly blood. All it did was make her snicker. "Oh, Dean. Couldn't you make a stab at dignity for once in your pathetic life?" She wiped the blood off her face, and then backhanded him. He was pretty sure she loosened a tooth. "Now be a good little meat puppet. Lucifer didn't say you had to have all your limbs when we brought you in. Would you say you're more of a left leg guy or a right leg guy?"

The funny thing? He didn't care anymore. He really didn't. Dean hadn't wanted to face the agony of Lucifer wearing Sam's body again, but that was about it. His survival instinct had all but given up, and wasn't it about goddamn time? The world was in its death throes, and he really didn't want to be standing on the sidelines watching when it breathed its last. He had failed, in a way too big to honestly grasp. His brother was dead, his family was dead, the world was dead. Why was he still here?

Suddenly a voice said something in Latin, and a waft of dust came over the hood of the truck. It smelled vaguely medicinal to Dean. Meg's eyes widened, and she suddenly began choking, grabbing her throat and falling off him. She wasn't alone; all her remaining hench demons were reacting the same way, clawing at their own throats and gasping for air. After a few seconds of writhing, all the demons escaped their vessels in clouds of black spectral smoke, and he watched them swirl off into the reddish sky, leaving empty and dead meat suits behind.

Dean wasn't sure how to feel about this last minute save. He was ready to go. Maybe they were going to kill him instead. He looked up, and a familiar and baffling figure was there, crouching down beside him. He had a smug smirk on his face. "You're welcome," Crowley said.


	2. Thick As Thieves

_**2- Thick As Thieves**_

Dean sighed. Funny how a bad situation could always get worse. "Crowley. What the hell do you want?"

"That's gratitude for you. No 'thanks for saving my bacon, you handsome devil'?"

Dean glared at him. "Please tell me you can read minds." He was imagining stabbing him in the face, over and over again.

Crowley's smug grin got smugger somehow. "No, not unless I possess you. Which I could do, if you're really dying to have me inside you."

"Yeah, okay, I'm gonna kill you now." Dean shifted, pushing with his legs and using the truck to stand up. He still felt the ties around his wrists, but he slammed them against his back while pulling his wrists as far apart as possible. It took a couple of tries, but finally the ties snapped.

Crowley, who was standing now, wisely took a couple of steps back. "Oh. So you know how to do that. I should have guessed, with your track record. Rough trade. Your kind never need safe words."

Meg had taken Ruby's knife from him, but now that her meat suit was dead, it was just laying on the pavement. He scooped it up, and when he spun, Crowley was now a couple of steps farther away, out of slashing distance. This did bring one of the many questions swirling around his mind to the forefront. "What did you do to them?"

Crowley played it casual, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. "Just a spell. My mother was a witch, in both senses of the word. I picked up a few things."

Fantastic. So he was a devious son of a bitch demon who could also pull witch shit. His life was getting better and better all the time. Dean caught a glimpse of himself in the side mirror, with a bleeding nose and a blackening eye, and a cut near his temple that he didn't feel until he saw, and decided he'd seen enough. Also, he didn't realize he had kind of a beard now, but he did. Then again, when was the last time he'd shaved? He couldn't remember that either. Why bother? There was no one to see him but demons. "What do you want, Crowley?"

Crowley quirked an eyebrow at him, still unreasonably chipper. He was also wearing a dapper dark suit and a silk tie, all of which had no place in a post-apocalyptic landscape. He didn't even have a bit of dust on him, not a hair out of place. "You just aren't a fan of the foreplay, are you? Fine. I think we can help each other, Dean."

Dean opened the driver's side door and slumped in the seat. He kind of expected that. Crowley was a crossroads demon; he did nothing out of the goodness of his own heart. "And how is that, exactly?"

"Lucifer wants the both of us. I figure we might stand a better chance of surviving if we stick together. Speaking of which …" He pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it in Dean's lap. It was just a small black velvet bag, cinched at the top by a silk cord.

Dean examined it skeptically. "A hex bag. I got my own, thanks."

"Not like that you don't. Yours are generic brand, mine are top shelf."

Dean knew he shouldn't trust Crowley, even if he was wanted by Lucifer too, which was undoubtedly true. Meg bet on Lucifer; Crowley bet on the Winchesters. It may have been the first bad bet of his life. He dropped it in his pocket. "All we are together is a bigger target. How are you still alive, anyway?"

Crowley snorted. "Me? Come on, I was almost the King of Hell. Frankly I'm shocked you're still alive. The Human race is not doing so well these days."

"Yeah, well, I have a knack for surviving." He never knew what a curse that was until all the world went to Hell. "You're not getting to the point, Crowley."

"I've already told you –"

"Bullshit. Tell me the fucking truth or I'm gone."

Crowley rolled his eyes, like he was being the difficult one. "Fine, take all the bloody poetry out of it, you troglodyte. What would you say if I told you there might be a way to kill Lucifer?"

Dean leaned back against the seat, still so tired he could barely believe it. He just wanted to close his eyes and fall asleep and never wake up. But he hadn't yet perfected the never waking up part. "Been there, done that. Didn't work. Lucifer can't be killed."

"Lucifer can't be killed by any Human weapons, no."

Dean impaled him with a stare. "If there was a weapon that could kill Lucifer, why didn't you tell me and Sam about it before?"

"Because getting this one may be … difficult. But we have so little to lose now, might be worth it."

This guy was so full of shit, he wondered if he knew when he was telling the truth. Probably not. "Okay, so this is why you want to team up all of the sudden. How difficult exactly?"

Crowley gazed at his manicured (!) hand like maybe he'd spotted a flaw, but Dean knew he was just avoiding looking at him. "It would require crossing over into Purgatory. The weapon's hidden there, from what I understand."

"Purgatory? Purgatory exists?"

"It does. It's where the beasties go when they die. But there are a few issues we'll need to work out."

"Such as?"

"You'd have to go in and get it."

"Fuck you." Dean grabbed the whiskey bottle from the floor and had a few swallows.

"There's no need for vulgarity. I'd do it myself if I could, but I can't."

"Uh huh. And why's that?"

"Because demons aren't allowed in Purgatory. It spits us right back out. But Humans are the skeleton keys of the dimensional realms. You can get in, and there's a portal made specifically to let Humans out. See, it's all fun and games for you lot. It's prejudice is what it is."

Dean wondered if he'd ever get drunk enough to care. He really should be killing this bastard, but the pathetic thing? It was actually nice to talk to someone. He should just kill himself now. "What kind of weapon are we talking about?"

"It's a sword called Godslayer by the poxy arses who made it. A bunch of monsters, mostly vampires and Leviathans, had it in their heads they could make a weapon to slay any god they wanted, including the biggies. They worked at it for decades. Supposedly the final product is lethal as all get out, but they hit a problem with it."

"What?"

"Couldn't get it out of Purgatory. Couldn't get themselves out either. Once you're in Purgatory, there's really no way out, except in very rare circumstances."

What the hell were Leviathans? Dean then remembered he didn't care about any of this. "And they're just gonna hand it to me, huh?"

Crowley smiled, and this time, it seemed remarkably genuine. "Oh hell no. You'll have to slaughter a load of beasties to get it. Probably have to slaughter a load on your way out. But when you have the sword it will be exponentially easier."

Kill stuff? Dean couldn't deny that was his one gift: he was good at killing shit. He was still alive in Hellworld, right? "I'm failing to see how this benefits me."

"What do you mean?"

"Say I get this sword, and it actually works, and I kill Lucifer. You get to be King of Hell, and I get what?"

"Revenge?" At Dean's glare, he continued. "Also, you could save what's left of the world. I'll be the first to admit many of the choice bits are gone, but there are still pieces worth saving."

"So I'm not the last man on Earth?"

"I should think not. You can't believe a word Meg says. She's a lying whore."

"And you're not?"

"Ooh, that stings. I'm hurt." Despite his words, it looked like this genuinely amused Crowley. His eyes were smiling even if his mouth wasn't. Dean now worried that he got off on these kinds of things, and then decided it was too late to worry about that now.

He gulped down the last of the whiskey, and tossed the bottle down into the shallow valley. Humanity could be remembered by its burnt cars and discarded liquor bottles. Just about the only things they were good at. "Is Sam still alive?"

Crowley shook his head. "Luci burns through vessels fast. That's why he had to have a super special one. If he wanted to be cruel, he may have kept Sam alive for a week or so, but I don't see how he could survive after that. It'd be like living in the heart of the sun."

Kind of what he thought. But hope died last. "What about Michael?"

"Super dead. Which is a shame, because it would have been fun to kill him."

Dean wondered what Cass's "dad" thought about this, and then remembered how they all died. At least Cass and Bobby had relatively quick deaths, being exploded and given a broken neck, respectively. Dean wondered how long it took Sam to die, and wondered when he would stop dying. Because it felt to Dean like he'd been dying from that day forward.

Dean sighed, and rued the fact that he was such a coward he couldn't even kill himself. But this suicide mission would give him ample opportunity to get killed, right? If he played his cards right, he'd get his head ripped off the first day. He wouldn't even have to survive to Crowley's inevitable double cross. "If we kill Lucifer, could you bring Sam back?"

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Are you proposing a deal?"

"If that's what it takes, yeah. Once we get Lucifer, you get my soul right away, as long as you bring Sam back."

"That means going back to Hell, you know."

Dean held out his hands, gesturing to the wider world. "What do you mean back? I'm here already, aren't I?"

"Point to you. Well, if we're going to make a deal, you have to –"

"I'm not kissing you."

"Not before brushing your teeth you're not," Crowley agreed. "You smell like the world's saddest brewery. But we're going to have to do it at some point to cement the deal. I assume we have one?"

Was there some other way? He'd looked high and low for a way to stop the Apocalypse, bring Sam and Bobby back, but even crossroads demons were off the clock now that hell was on Earth. Except for Crowley, who was just scheming a way to stay alive in the new regime. The funny thing was, Dean didn't even blame him. Sometimes you just did what you had to do. And Dean was so very tired. Of running, of fighting, of being the only one left. He would give anything to just stop. "Why the fuck not? It's not like I have anything better to do."

"Capital. Now we should head for Ensenada."

"What's in Ensenada?"

"The nearest Hellgate."

Dean tried to stare a new hole in Crowley's skull, but he was so tired he was relatively certain the full brunt of his rage was not getting through. "Why the fuck would we go to a Hellgate?"

Crowley attempted an innocent expression that didn't quite fit his face. "Didn't I mention? To get to Purgatory we're going to have to take a short cut through Hell."

Dean almost couldn't believe his audacity. Although what was he thinking? This was Crowley; he was three-fourths bullshit, and one-fourth gall. "We're both on Hell's most wanted list. And you want us to just walk in like we're fucking VIPs?"

Crowley, uninvited, got in on the passenger side, shoving an assortment of weapons onto the floor. "They'll never expect it."

Dean had no reply to that, because he was right. It was absolutely the stupidest thing anyone could have done. No one was crazy enough or idiotic enough or death wish-y enough to do something like that.

So of course they were going to do it. They were the only crazy, stupid people left.

* * *

Sam had Cass take him back to the Bunker right away, because it was faster. Although, in the end, it may not have mattered.

Sam did every locator spell he knew, including a couple of new ones, but they all told him the same thing: if Dean was on Earth, he was invisible to all forms of magical detection. Cass had had no luck either. Finally, Cass said, "Simeon didn't take him anywhere close by."

"Which means what?" Sam asked, cleaning up the remains of a scrying spell that didn't work.

"Another dimension."

"Like Heaven?" He knew this was wishful thinking even as he poured the herbal scented water down the sink.

"No. Not Hell either. A Human in either place would be noticeable for not being dead, and Simeon wouldn't dare breach Hell alone."

"So what kind of dimension are we talking about?" When he didn't answer right away, Sam turned back to him.

Cass grimaced in pain and shrugged. "There are more dimensions than could be searched in your lifetime. He could have dropped him anywhere."

Sam had been afraid of that. He dried his hands on a towel, and willed himself not to panic. Panicking would help nothing. "Would Dean remember that he doesn't belong wherever he is? Would he try and contact us?"

Cass shook his head. "Simeon could easily reorganize his memories."

Sam rubbed his eyes, trying to think. This was very bad. "So what's our next move exactly?"

"We have to track down Simeon. Only he knows where he put Dean. He can tell us where he is."

"Cass, he wants to kill you. Why would he tell us anything?"

Cass got a grim look on his face that was never anything but bad news. "Because we're going to make him.

Angel torture? Sam swallowed a groan at the thought, and then wondered if this place had an angel dungeon. It had a demon dungeon – was that so far fetched? But it did occur to him that if this place didn't have one, he could always make one.

Man, how low did your life have to sink when the very thought of making an angel dungeon gave you a mild thrill? That was just sad.

And he'd be damned if he ever admitted that to anyone.


	3. Hounds

_**3 – Hounds**_

Dean was walking along a hot, barren road, his throat full of dust, the pack heavy on his back, the rifle in his hands making them sweat. He wasn't sure where he was going, he was just going. Everything he did now was simply run to an unknown destination, to an unseen horizon. He didn't know what the endgame was, nor did he care.

Suddenly, up ahead, there was a man standing in the middle of the road. His back was to him, but he looked familiar. Maybe it was the trench coat. "Cass!" he shouted, not daring to hope that it was really him. But he'd been resurrected before, right? It could happen again …

Cass turned, but very suddenly, he wasn't Cass anymore. He was Sam, smiling at him in a sickly, predatory way that proved this wasn't Sam at all. It was Lucifer.

He stopped, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered. Because Dean was sure now that this was no ordinary dream.

Lucifer used to be an angel. He could walk through dreams.

"Hello Dean," Lucifer said, using Sam's voice just like his body. He didn't have to, but he wanted to inflict as much pain as possible.

"Fuck off and die," he snapped, turning away. His rifle was no longer in his hands, but that was no shock.

And Lucifer was right behind him, waiting with a sunny smile, hands clasped before him. "So what's it like to be replaced as the top of the food chain? We couldn't ask the dinosaurs because they weren't very articulate. Humans though, they have nothing but words. Like words can save them."

Dean knew he couldn't take the bait. Lucifer wanted his pain, his rage; he fed on it like a psychic vampire. But he found it impossible not to shake with fury in the presence of this monster, to not want to rip his face off and make him eat it. "Stop wearing my brother, you son of a bitch."

His smile widened, showing all his teeth. "Do you want to know what his last words were? I owe you that, I suppose." He bent over, grabbing his head, and let out a horrifying scream of pain. Eventually, it became words. "Help me! Dean!"

"Stop it!" Dean lunged, meaning to tackle and punch the shit out of this monster, but he stumbled, as Lucifer was not there anymore. He was behind him, smiling again.

"A lot of last words fall along that line. You'd be surprised."

"I will kill you if it's the last fucking thing I do," Dean said, spitting each word out like a bullet. He was trying to keep himself from shaking, but he was failing. His hands were balled up into fists so tightly at his side his fingernails were digging deep gouges in his own skin. "I will make you regret the day you decided to let me live."

Lucifer just kept on wearing Sam, and he kept on smiling. Dean wanted to carve it off with the dullest blade he owned. "Oh, so you're acknowledging I let you live. I guess that's some growth on your part. Good for you. Even after the world ends, personal change is possible."

"Why don't you just kill me already, you fucking asshole?"

"You're a hunter, Dean. You know. The best part of it all isn't the kill, it's the chase. And you've done well, little gingerbread man, much better than a man who doesn't really know how to function without a brother should have done. But I know where you are now. I think you're finally running out of time."

"Where am I?"

"Northern California."

"Be more specific."

Lucifer's smile mutated into a smirk. It was an ugly look that didn't belong on Sam's face. "Still cocky. You gotta love that. An insect who taunts the hand right before he's squashed. He's no less dead, but you gotta respect the balls."

"If you know where I am, kill me now." He held out his arms, welcoming the death blow. "C'mon, asshat, I'm right here. Do it. Do it!"

Lucifer then did the most disturbing thing: he giggled. Like a little boy who knows he's getting away with something bad. "And ruin my fun? I want to pull your legs off, one by one. Then your arms. Did you ever wonder how long you'd live as just a stump? 'Cause I've gotta admit, I'm curious."

"You're wrong."

Lucifer cocked his head. "No, I really am curious."

"I favor the kill over the chase. Want me to show you? Come find me."

He clapped his hands together slowly. "Marvelous. See why I've let you live? No one gives me the kind of entertainment you do. You are my favorite pet. I can see why Castiel enjoyed you so much."

Dean's rage was molten, but there was a weird comfort in it. The anger filled all his empty spaces, made him feel less hollow. "I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch. I will find a way."

"Keep thinking that, mud monkey. Maybe it'll keep you going another day or two." Lucifer kept grinning at him, barely suppressing a laugh. "Don't stop believin'."

"You're finished. Enjoy your last days on Earth, dickhead."

He clutched his chest dramatically, still grinning the whole time. "I can't tell you how much this warms my heart. You want your meat to have a little fight in it, you know? Makes it taste that much better."

Something in Dean snapped. He was tired of the torment, of Lucifer getting all high and mighty and lording Sam's death over him like this. Did he want him to know he failed? Too late. That was imprinted in his brain like a brand, like a mark burned into his skin. He knew he had failed Sam, the world, every single goddamn person on this planet. He wanted to forget, but he never could. Failure was all around him, in the corpses and the dead cities, in the air that smelled like sulfur and tasted of ash. Dean leaned in, and whispered, "Do it, little man."

Lucifer finally stopped grinning like an idiot. "Excuse me?"

"Put up or shut up. Rip off my arm and beat me to death with it. Make me drown in my own blood. Or are you too scared of losing your favorite toy? Do I mean something to you, Luci? Ask me to prom already or get the fuck outta my way."

Lucifer met his gaze, and Dean could see the flames in Sammy's irises, blue-white and angelic as opposed to fire red, but all the more scorching for it. The skies were crimson, but the flames that consumed the world were blue. "It's going to be sad to see you go, Dean. Your pain tastes like fear, did you know that? All metallic. Like blood."

"Is that the best you got?"

A slow smile crept across Lucifer's face, and it was leering, mocking. "You seeing me at my best will be the last thing you ever see." He then shot out a hand, straight through Dean's chest, and he could feel it. It was like the fire was in his blood, charring him from the inside out, killing him with every beat of his heart. And he could hear screaming, so much screaming …

Dean jolted awake, reflexively reaching for his gun before he even knew where he was. But it came back to him. He was slumped in the passenger seat, while Crowley kind of drove. Kind of because it turned out he actually didn't know how to drive, having never needed to (he was driven, on the few occasions vehicles were necessary), but since Dean could do it, he figured he could too. Dean made sure he knew where the gas and brake were, and figured good enough. There was no one else on the roads anyway. And he was so tired he was sure he was going to pass out. Getting two hours of sleep here and there had left him in a permanent sleep deprivation cycle.

"I'm going to assume that was a nightmare," Crowley said, barely sparing a glance in his direction.

Dean felt moisture on his face, and was horrified to discover he'd been crying in his sleep. Hopefully Crowley didn't notice. Right now he had the radio on, even though it blasted nothing but static. Crowley claimed there was some angel and demon talk in there, you just had to know how to hear it. Crowley could; Dean couldn't.

He hastily wiped off his face, and said, "You're lucky you don't sleep. Lucifer likes to crash dreams."

Crowley made a disgusted noise. "Angels. Can never leave well enough alone. I never knew why you liked them. Arrogant featherheads."

"I didn't. They're all dicks. Except Cass."

"Ah yes, your boyfriend in the trenchcoat. Shame he got exploded. Some angel power would be useful right now."

Dean's hands ached, and looking, he could see why. He hadn't only been clenching his fists in his dream. He'd left crescent shaped fingernail marks in his own palm, some of which were actually bleeding. He would have wondered how that didn't wake him up, but of course Lucifer wasn't letting him wake up that easy.

Crowley was pretty much driving down the center of the road, not even picking a lane, but it didn't matter. It also didn't matter that he was pushing this truck to its limit, going about a hundred miles an hour, making the engine rattle in a way that made the mechanic in Dean cringe. Soon this thing was just going to give, the engine explode or the transmission drop out; it was just going to stop dead and be done, maybe give them an engine fire as a freebie. But they could just steal another vehicle and keep going, because they seemed to be some of the few people still functioning on the West Coast. Well, Dean was. Crowley was just another demon among many, although he'd object to the "another". Might as well ride everything like you stole it, because that's all they were doing.

Judging from the scenery screaming by, they were definitely in Southern California now, but he didn't know how close to their destination they actually were. "You didn't tell him of our plans, did you?"

Dean scowled. "Of course I fucking didn't. He didn't ask, either. He thinks he's invulnerable. He doesn't care what I do. He knows he can't be killed."

"Everything can be killed, you just have to know what their weakness is. Of all people, Dean, you should know that."

"I don't know anything anymore." He tried to focus on something sliding past the windows, but he gave up and enjoyed the blur. He should take over driving, but he didn't care. Let Crowley wreck them. At these speeds, it would be a quick death. "So what's the plan? How do we get in the Hellgate?"

"I still have allies. They'll let us in."

"And then?"

Crowley smiled faintly. "Do you want to ruin the surprise?"

"Shall I open the door and jump out now?"

He stared at him out of the corner of his eye. "You are just unhinged enough to do it, aren't you? I will admit, I always thought breaking you would be fun, but now that I'm seeing it, it's just sad. It's like finding out the Boogeyman's a bedwetter and in the middle of an acrimonious divorce. You want your villains to be villainous, not as fucked up as everyone else."

"I'm a villain?"

"You are to demons. Think about it."

Dean had never really done that before, but yeah, that made total sense. In any other circumstance, being called the demon equivalent of the Boogeyman would have made him happy, but right now he felt nothing. He was all dead inside, as numb as he could ever get. Lucifer had been hollowing him out for a long time. "So what do we do once we're in Hell?"

"Running's good. But there's a doorway into Purgatory from Hell. It's hidden and secret, but I'll get you there. Once you go through, you're on your own. I'll be waiting for you at Purgatory's Human exit. But speed it up, huh? Time is of the essence. Every hour between here and now is an hour Lucifer could be getting closer to our plan."

"How will I know where to find any of this shit in Purgatory?"

Crowley reached into his pocket and tossed him a square of folded paper. Dean unfolded it, getting some smears of blood on it, and discovered a rudimentary map, with inky clusters of trees, a blue line of river, brown ridges of mountains, and a red path that had "Entrance", "Exit", and "Sword" marked in text and X's. "No this way or over here?"

"It's an adaptive map, smart ass, so don't lose it."

"Adaptive?"

"Sort of like the Maurader's Map in Harry Potter." Dean stared at him, until Crowley looked at him in what appeared to be full on shock. "You never read Harry Potter?"

"No. What am I, twelve?"

He shook his head. "I'm a demon, and even I know that's bad form. You missed out on a classic."

"I'll add that to my who gives a shit list." He folded up the map, and shoved it in his coat pocket. "So what kind of weaponry do I need to take into Purgatory?"

"I'd say everything you could carry, but then you'd be too loaded down to run. Take a gun if you want, but they'll be of limited use. I'd say machetes, knives, anything that can take off a head and doesn't need reloading. And never stop moving. You will be a cold beer on a hot day to them. Nothing like a fresh soul to wash those blues away."

"How many monsters are we talking about?"

"How many monsters can dance on the head of a pin? Think of every one you've ever killed, and multiply that by a million."

Dean tried to do that, and failed. "What are the odds I actually get out of that place alive?"

Crowley shrugged. "I always assumed you'd be a "never tell me the odds" kind of guy."

"When you seem to be setting me up for a suicide mission, I get curious."

"Oh pshaw. You're Dean Winchester, scourge of the demon realm, monster murderer valedictorian. If anybody can make it through there in one piece, it's you. In fact, you're probably the only one who could."

"Are you blowing sunshine up my skirt?"

"Never. Although I am dying to see you in a skirt. I bet you'd look adorable in gingham."

Dean glared at him. "I could always push you out of the truck."

"You could, but you're never getting rid of me that easy."

That's what he was afraid of, and was the sole reason he didn't do it. Neither angels or demons would ever leave him alone. Even death was no escape. No rest for the wicked or the damned.

Dean helped himself to a beer, and gnawed on some beef jerky to quiet his stomach, even though he felt like vomiting more than a few times.

He was unaware of when they'd passed into Baja, as Crowley went off road at some point, but when he started to see a blur of the Pacific Ocean outside the glass, he knew they were there. With the sky so red, it could be difficult to tell the night from day, but Dean's body clock was telling him it was dusk. That was good, because years as a hunter had trained him to be most awake at night, stalking things that lurked in the dark. He wondered if Purgatory had a day and night, or if it was all one or the other.

The truck finally gave it up on a lonely dirt road, just stopping dead with the engine ticking like a time bomb. "What a piece of shit," Crowley proclaimed, as if he hadn't just run the poor thing into the ground.

Since Dean assumed beheading was the only way to kill things in Purgatory – Crowley had implied as much – he slipped a couple of machetes in holsters over his shoulder, added a silver knife along with Ruby's knife and another hunting knife, and he took his .45 because he pretty much had to, although he didn't intend to use it unless he absolutely had no choice. He asked if holy water would do any good, but Crowley didn't think so.

Why was he trusting him? Oh, right, lack of options. It was the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" bullshit, although that had a tendency to bite you in the ass. But he had no other choices here, except wait for Lucifer's minions to find him. If he wanted any chance to kill him, this was his last, best chance.

At least the truck didn't die far from their target. They walked in on foot, and Dean was surprised to see that they were walking towards a large church. It looked old, done up in clapboard, but the steeple was still standing, and the stained glass looked unbroken. "A church?" Dean asked.

"Yep. Hellgate's in the basement."

"What?"

Crowley quirked an eyebrow at him. "Respectable drag. No one ever expects to find a Hellgate in a church, so no one ever looks."

Crowley would make a monster King of Hell, of this he was sure. But could he be any worse than Lucifer?

The inside of the church smelled like incense and dust. The pews were clean, polished wood, and the altar was your standard one, with candles and familiar iconography. Even Jesus on a cross. You had to give them an A+ for set dressing if nothing else.

Crowley took a side door that looked like it might lead into a choir room or something, but just led to a hall and a door that revealed wooden stairs going downward. The basement had a dirt floor and was all but empty, save for what appeared to a mural carved into the dirt. It was a circular, intricate maze; a minor work of art. Dean looked around, and asked, "Where's the Hellgate?"

"Right under your feet. We didn't want just anyone to walk in, now did we?" Crowley pulled out a knife and delicately punctured the tip of one finger, then held it out over the center of the maze. As soon as a drop of his blood hit the dirt, the circular maze started to move.

It contracted, almost like an iris, and then spun in a counterclockwise direction, opening up into a dark hole. Dean had never seen a Hellgate like this before, and had no idea what to make of it. Crowley just stepped into it, heedless, leaving Dean no choice but to do the same thing, even though he could see nothing in the darkness below.

He was shocked he landed so quickly, and felt it up his legs, which hadn't quite been ready to land so soon. He was in a dark corridor that smelled of brimstone and blood – Hell - and looking up, he saw nothing but solid rock. "What kind of Hellgate was that?" he asked, pitching his voice to a whisper. He didn't know why, but Dean thought maybe he should be quiet. Maybe it was just that the shrieks of pain were so far away.

"Consider it something of a servant's entrance," Crowley said, frowning distastefully at his own words. Didn't like thinking of himself as the help? "Only you assumed we were blundering through the front door."

They walked down this featureless corridor of stone for a bit, before Crowley said, "You go right, then left, and when you come to a junction, left again. It will look like you've hit a dead end, but you haven't. Push through the wall at the end of the corridor. It's a hidden shortcut. Don't forget to keep running through the jungle. Stop and you die."

"Why are you telling me this?"

But as soon as they reached the hallway junction, and were met by half a dozen demons, Dean knew why. Someone noticed the gate crashers. "Oh Crowley," said the leader, a bald man with a blond goatee. "Did you really think you could saunter back into Hell like you owned the place?" He glanced at Dean. "Ooh, and you brought a snack. Fantastic."

"Not just any snack," Crowley said. "This is the one the boss is looking for."

Was he double crossing him now, or was this a ploy? Dean wasn't sure whether to behead him now or not.

A female demon wearing an Angel t-shirt (cute), asked, "Winchester? Is this him?"

The smallest of the demons – which wasn't saying much, because he was six feet even – snickered. "He looks like a hobo you dug up at the train yard."

"You be hunted by Lucifer and look your best," Crowley countered. "Now, if you'll just tell me where he is, we'll be on our way."

Goatee crossed his muscular arms over his chest. "Right. Like you're gonna get the credit."

"We'll take you both to Lucifer," the female demon said. "Maybe he'll even let us play with you a little while before he finishes you off."

Crowley let out a small, disappointed sigh. "You muscle types are always so stupid. You never can see the bigger picture, can you?" He whistled sharply. "I'm never alone."

Goatee shook his head. "Got some traitorous little friends to help you? So what? We'll just gut them too."

There was a noise like an engine rumble, an angry dragon woken from a nap, and a huff of warm air from an unseen source. The demons started looking around nervously, and just by smell alone, Dean knew what was going on. Crowley hadn't signaled friends. He'd called his dogs.

The demons must have been able to see them, because the female one seemed startled. "What the fuck ..?"

"Dinner time, sweethearts," Crowley said, and made a hand gesture.

The hellhounds attacked.

There had to be several of them, because three demons jerked aside violently, as if snatched away by invisible sharks, and others were knocked down, their blood and flesh filling the air as claws tore at them and they screamed. Crowley looked at him, pointed right down the corridor, and shouted, "Run!"

Dean didn't have to be told twice. He ran into Hell's dark underbelly, and wondered if he'd make it. Or if he even cared if he didn't.


	4. No Rest For The Wicked

_**4 – No Rest For The Wicked**_

Sam wasn't crazy about the plan. But he didn't have any better ideas, so he had to go along with it.

While Cass was busy with his own finding Simeon plan, Sam worked out the whole angel dungeon thing. There were many empty rooms in the bunker, many holding areas for a wide assortment of creatures. He turned one such room into the world's largest angel trap.

Pouring a circle of holy oil was no problem. Recreating the exact sigils Cass taught him on the walls and floor took a bit more time, but the chains actually took the longest. He had to etch the sigils onto them, and he burned himself once or twice. But he got it done. And the work was great, because it kept him from obsessing about what might be happening to Dean. What kind of dimension was he dropped into? How bad was it? Because he knew Cass left out a lot of details when he said it could be "bad", never specifying where the beginning or the end of that was. But if Simeon wanted to torture Dean, there was no end to the torments he could heap upon him. It left Sam wondering what would be the worst.

If you asked Dean, what would he pick out as his worst of all possible worlds? He could think of a dozen possibilities right off the bat, but he didn't know which one Dean would have personally selected as the top of the heap. Maybe being in Hell again? You'd think that would be number one, but with Dean, it could be hard to tell. No one worked so hard at repressing his feelings harder than his brother. Dean's life work was cramming his own feelings in a box and shoving them deep in a corner of his mind he never visited. Sam didn't want to blame Dad for this, because it wasn't all his fault … but it kind of was. Despite his constant flashes of immaturity, Dean was forced to grow up super fast, and his way of coping was pretending he didn't feel when he so very clearly did. And Dean had never shaken the habit.

As much as it frustrated him, and as much as he sometimes wanted to slam Dean's head into a table until he finally fucking admitted some things, the truth was he knew this was a hit Dean took partially for him. Dean taking on most of the baggage and all of the obsessions of their Dad was what allowed Sam to eventually break away and have a stab at a semi-normal life. He couldn't have if Dad had successfully heaped this shit on him too. But Dean was always trying to spare him, like he thought maybe one of them should make out if they both couldn't. Those guilty ties that bound them together.

So maybe Dean was in another universe, stuck in Hell again. Or maybe he was reliving their Dad's death over and over again. Or maybe he was watching Sam die over and over again. Or Cass getting destroyed by the Leviathans. Or Bobby dying. Or Gadreel killing Kevin. Hard to say, wasn't it? There was so much ugliness and sorrow to choose from.

It was times like these, when Sam sat down and honestly reflected on their lives, that he wondered how either of them were sane. Seriously, this was just too much shit for a single lifetime. They should be in a mental ward up to their eyes in Thorazine. How were either of them rudimentary functioning humans at all?

This was why having time to think was so dangerous. Sam decided to do a little more touching up, just to get his mind off of it, and hoped Dean, wherever he was, was hanging on. Considering how shitty their lives had been up to this point, he must have been used to it by now.

* * *

Dean knew he was being followed, but he kept his head down, and he kept running. He treated looking back like it could be deadly, because it very well could have been. He just hoped whatever was on his heels was a demon and not a Hellhound, because goddamn, he hated those things.

He followed Crowley's instructions and tried to ignore everything he saw or heard, as it was bringing back strong, horrible Hell memories. Life now was bad enough without remembrances of hideous things past. He managed to grab a machete and unsheathe it, because he was expecting an attack at any moment.

Crowley's directions led him to a dead end hallway made of dirt and stone that smelled like a neglected graveyard. Moldy earth with a hint of decay. It ended in hard packed earth, and it looked solid and real. Was Crowley setting him up for something slapstick? He wouldn't put it past him.

But Dean was committed now, and he might as well see it through. He braced himself for impact and kept running, straight into the wall.

He felt … something. It wasn't a hard surface, but something almost gelatinous, and yet still made of dirt, so when he came through the other side, he was spitting out soil. But he did come through the other side.

And it was weird. He opened his eyes expecting another kind of Hell, but he found himself in a forest, beside a small river that was burbling peacefully. "What the fuck ..?" This was Purgatory? Okay, the colors seemed a little washed out, but it was pretty nice. Not like Hell at all. Why couldn't he have been sent here instead of Hell when he died?

Then he heard the snarling.

It was coming from somewhere in the trees, and sounded somewhat demonic, although it couldn't be an actual demon. Vampires? Or something else. He was hearing movement too.

He checked his map, and saw the red line went forward for about half a mile, then zagged left around a clump of trees. Dean shoved it back in his pocket and started running, machete held at the ready, prepared to chop off the head of the first thing that came for him.

Something was coming, all right. A lot of somethings. He could hear their footsteps, the crunch of dried leaves, that rabid snarling, which was growing louder all the time. Holy shit, was it werewolves? If so, it was a huge pack of them. The sounds of their paws hitting the dirt sounded like the galloping of horses.

Well, all he'd been doing lately was fighting. And hiding and running. But he was at his best when he was fighting. And he was going to have to be, if he wanted to live through this.

The question was, did he want to or not? Dean still wasn't sure. He supposed he'd find out soon enough.

* * *

Simeon had done a great job warding himself. But not the best. That's what told Castiel it was a trap.

He could have made himself completely invisible to all of Heaven's eyes if he had wanted to; he had already, for many years. Most he'd probably spent in other dimensions, far out of their gaze, but if he could come here and take Dean without Heaven being aware of him, he was good. Too good to be caught, even on the most minor of technicalities. Simeon knew he'd have to make it difficult if he wanted it to seem like he simply slipped up, not like it was a trap, but Castiel had, to borrow a Human phrase, been around this block too many times. He'd also been with the Winchesters too long. Trap sighting was becoming a hobby.

Not that that was stopping him from going after Simeon. He just had to adjust his plans accordingly, and, according to Sam, "improvise". Which admittedly wasn't his strong suit. But at least both Sam and Dean had given him some idea of how to do that. Sam's improvs were more complex, while Dean's were more of the punch it in the face variety. He wasn't sure which one he'd need. They both seemed equally effective.

Simeon was in the rooftop garden of a New York penthouse, owned by someone who had much more money than sense. There was also a pool, and the garden was full of flowers and topiary displays. It was lovely, yes, but impractical, and the money spent on it could have housed dozens of homeless people in the city with money left over. Still, Humans were very impractical, and some of them were intensely greedy and short sighted. It was weird how those two states of being often overlapped.

There was an outdoor patio area, complete with a fireplace and lounging chairs, in sight of the pool. Simeon was sitting on one of those lounge chairs, drinking from a martini glass. His vessel was still a tall, slim man with short brown hair, and a strange propensity for slacks and the t-shirts of skateboard manufacturers. Time away in other dimensions had not changed this. You kind of hoped it would. "Castiel. Proof that only the good die young."

That was a curious comment, since, as angels, none of them were technically young. But Castiel did recognize it as a Human expression. (Also incorrect. But many Human expressions were incorrect.) "Simeon, if you want me, here I am. Just let Dean go."

Simeon smiled, and Castiel noticed rudimentary acne on his vessel's face. How young had he been? Twenty one, twenty two? "Dean. Your mind goes instantly to your Human pet. You make a habit of that, don't you? He's your weakness." Simeon dropped the glass, and didn't care that it shattered. "I had friends who worked for Naomi. She was trying to talk me back in, assuring me she had you under control. But what broke the hold she had over you? Two guesses."

"The angel tablet."

He stood, ill fitting sneakers crushing the broken glass beneath his feet. "That severed the hold. What broke it first? Your little pet. It's funny how often he comes up in your corrosion. When did you first turn your back on Heaven? Helping him. He is a theme."

"He is blameless. The problem is mine."

"He is the reason you became so corrupted!" He was so furious his face actually flushed. "You chose these … things over Heaven. Over your own people! You are the worst kind of traitor." Simeon paused briefly, breathing hard. His stare was as cold as space. "Aren't you going to say anything?"

"What is there to say? I've done more damage to Heaven and our people than I can ever repay. But I'm trying my best to make amends."

Simeon laughed mirthlessly. It was quite forced. "Make amends? How do you make amends to the dead, Castiel?"

That was a fair point, and he had no answer for that. Castiel had wondered that himself. He was shamed by all he had done, and for a time he was sure he could do absolutely nothing, and he was paralyzed with fear of facing Heaven – and his failure – again. But he soon learned he would either help Heaven in some small way, or he'd sit on the sidelines and do nothing. He hated doing nothing. Besides, as Dean and Sam had both told him, if you screwed up, you did your best to make it right, even if you could never completely do that. You had to try. "I can't fix what I've done. I never claimed I could. And I'm more sorry about Rachel than I could ever express."

Simeon's face contorted with hatred. "Don't you even speak her name." His angel blade appeared in his hand.

"I don't want to fight you, Simeon. I betrayed you and you're right to be angry. But I can't let you strand Dean in another dimension. Bring him back, and then you can do whatever you want to me. But not before you bring Dean back."

Simeon smiled, but it wasn't right. It showed his teeth, and his eyes were still almost incandescent with rage. "Are you gonna kill more angels to save your Human pet, Castiel? Is this what you're reduced to? Is there no angel left in you at all?"

He had honestly hoped there was some part of Simeon he could still reach. He hadn't wanted to hurt him. His rage was justified … as long as it was aimed only at him. But it wasn't. Dean shouldn't pay for Castiel's sins. He hadn't wanted to emphasize this message with violence, but Simeon clearly had other ideas.

As soon as Castiel saw the flicker of flame, he quickly relocated to the far corner of the roof, away from Simeon. He'd moved just in time, because he could see the flaming circle of holy oil in front of Simeon's chair. Simeon turned to face him with a snarl. "So you know that one, huh?"

He simply dipped his head. "It's been done."

"Did you think I was the only one enraged by your betrayal?"

Castiel felt the other angels behind him before they grabbed his arms. He glanced at them and didn't really recognize either, although he had the dimmest memory of seeing them near Naomi's office. "I don't want to hurt you, brothers."

The one on his right, a compact blond man, snorted. The one on his left, taller and more slender, refused to even look at him, as though Castiel was unworthy of even that. Maybe he was.

Simeon barked a laugh. "Do you really think you could hurt us, traitor? You're probably so Human now we could kill you without a blade."

Castiel met Simeon's eyes. "This is your last chance. Tell me where you sent Dean."

His amusement was genuine. "Do you really think you have a chance here, you Human loving piece of filth?"

Right. Dean style improv it was.

Castiel threw his elbow right into the blond man's face, hard enough to make something in his vessel crack, and then threw a punch in the face of the angel holding his left arm. He'd just shaken them off when Simeon tackled him, and they went plunging off the side of the building.

They grappled as they fell, Simeon trying to stab him, but Castiel was able to turn his wrist out. He then kicked him in the midsection and sent him flying through a plate glass window on the building's tenth floor. Castiel quickly followed him in, not wanting to give him time to recover. He grabbed Simeon by the collar and punched him, hard enough to do lethal damage to the vessel if Simeon wasn't inside holding him together.

Simeon had managed to keep a hold of his blade and tried to stab him, but Castiel knew it was coming and grabbed his arm, twisting it until it cracked with the sound of a branch snapping under the weight of too much snow. The blade fell from the vessel's useless fingers, and Castiel kicked it away.

But Simeon wasn't stupid. He swept Castiel's legs out from underneath him, and jumped on top of him as he fell, slamming Castiel's head into the floor so brutally he could hear it cracking under the strain. Another slam, and the floor started giving way.

Castiel and Simeon fell through to the neighboring floor, but as they did, Castiel was able to grab Simeon and turn. Simeon hit the floor with Castiel riding him down, and he punched him again, putting in as much force as he dared. The vessel's face briefly collapsed in a mass of bone and blood before Simeon repaired the damage, but while he was doing that, Castiel pulled out the shackles Sam had given him, the one with angel sigils on them, and he quickly bound Simeon's hands.

Simeon attempted to kick him off, but the sigils on the chains not only trapped angels, they weakened them, and he couldn't. "What the hell is this?" he demanded, quickly scuttling away. He probably tried to fly, but his wings were no good now.

Castiel got to his feet, and gave the terrified Human whose living room they'd just fallen into an apologetic glance before crossing over to where she was cowering and putting a finger on her forehead. She instantly fell asleep, and would wake up in a few hours thinking this was a crazy dream. After all, who would believe angels fell through your apartment fighting? That was just crazy.

"Remember, I gave you a chance," Castiel told Simeon, before grabbing him and taking him to the Bunker before his friends could rescue him.

Castiel felt terrible about this, but he knew this was going to get very ugly before it got any better. He should be accustomed to that by now.


	5. Idle Hands

_**5 – Idle Hands**_

Dean changed his mind about wishing he'd been sent to Purgatory instead of Hell when the werewolves and vampires decided to attack him at the same time.

He was lucky – if you could call it that in these particular circumstances, which were as far from the concept of lucky as you were able to get – that they hadn't discussed this strategy ahead of time, and also attacked each other. Otherwise Dean imagined he would have been drawn and quartered by fang and claw.

He didn't have a lot of time to think; he could only react, and never slow down too long, as both vampires and werewolves were fucking fast. Some of the vampires had weapons, which seemed counter-intuitive (they were weapons), but after beheading one that had a weird looking scythe kind of weapon, with a mid-length handle and a thick, curved obsidian blade that looked like it could take the head off an elephant, he grabbed one for himself. The machete was good, but this thing was fantastic. He could also kill them from farther away, which was just a bonus.

He used the scythe like blade first on a werewolf that had caught up to him and lunged. Dean sliced it clean in half, the obsidian blade not ever catching on the spine. Yeah, this weapon was a vicious motherfucker, and he totally loved it. Too bad this wasn't Godslayer.

The only way Dean managed to put any distance between him and his pursuers was because they got in fights with themselves. This was especially true when a wendigo joined in the fun, and started eating the vampires. Dean became an afterthought. Apparently Purgatory was also where any monster could eat any other monster. Fun.

As soon as he reached a clearing, Dean turned and fought the werewolves before they could surround him and take him down like a wild animal. The scythe weapon allowed him to take two in one swing if he was careful with his aim, and he didn't worry about cutting off their heads, because if you sliced them in half, it had much the same effect. One of the werewolves managed to bite his arm, but a quick slice and he shook off the half of the body still latched on to his arm. It wasn't a bad bite, the teeth barely got through his leather jacket, and he was pretty sure his skin was unbroken. But did you have to worry about getting turned in Purgatory? There was a poser. He needed to be careful so he never found out.

Also, that begged the question of what happened to monsters when they died in Purgatory. Were they like angels when they got banished to the cornfield, and simply came back later? He had so many questions. But, first, running for his life.

A quick check of the map showed he was closer, but not as close as he would have liked. Since Dean had a quiet second, he gave himself that time to catch his breath. He was not a marathon runner. He was a sprinter by nature, mainly because if a chase took too long, he gave up and went to plan B. This was why it was good to hunt with another person, because someone could always cut them off at the pass.

But he started running again, and took a couple of seconds to enjoy the setting. A placid forest, with clean air. Pretty nice really, if you ignored all the monsters. Also, he passed several bone piles that suggested something lived out here that routinely made snacks of visitors. (His money was on the wendigo.)

Dean was just in view of the sinister looking clump of trees when two things fell from the sky and hit the ground in front of him with the force of meteors. He stumbled back, wondering if they were indeed just that, when he saw it was two very average looking people, a man and a woman, standing in the indents their impact created. He was deeply confused. Were there superheroes here too?

They eyed him coldly, and then suddenly their heads became giant mouths full of needle sharp teeth. No eyes, no nose; nothing but a huge, gaping maw. "What the fuck are you freaks?" he asked, not really expecting an answer. Were these the Leviathans Crowley mentioned? Dean had been expecting something big, but these made up for it in ugliness.

They charged, and Dean lashed out with the scythe, taking one of their arms off, but it didn't seem to slow them down one bit. He took a punch in the jaw that made him see stars and fall against the nearest tree, but he managed to weave aside as the man's fist came in again, and it took a huge divot out of the tree's massive trunk. Dean finally got his opportunity to aim, and sliced the man's head clean off.

The woman grabbed him by the arm and threw him twenty feet, where he only stopped when he impacted with a different tree. His breath left him in a pained rush, and when he slumped to the ground, he realized he had dropped his scythe. Still, he had a machete on his back.

His body didn't want to work with him, since he was lacking oxygen and all, but Dean forced it, grabbing the machete with weak fingers, and pulling it out just seconds before the evil big head was on him, her disgusting toothy maw all up in his face. He cut off her head and most of her neck with a vicious swipe of the blade, but hey, it counted. She slid off him gushing black goo that was probably its blood, but smelled a little like a tire fire.

Goddamn it, they were strong. He was glad he'd never encountered Leviathans topside.

When he had his breath back, Dean got up, retrieved his scythe, and took off towards the sinister clump of trees. He was closer to his target, and not dead yet. That had to be a positive, right?

It was then he heard more snarling behind him, and began to wonder about the wendigo. Only fire killed them. He had his lighter, but how was he going to torch one up with just that?

Fuck, he was going to have to run, fight, and think too. This was really not his day.

* * *

Considering how often torture played a part in his life, you'd think Sam would've liked it, or at least been inured to it. But he wasn't. It was ugly, it was messy, and it was wrong.

Having said, that, Sam really wanted to grab Cass's angel blade and stab Simeon in the head until he popped.

He was kind of used to arrogant and Human hating angels by now, but Simeon was still getting under his skin. All Sam could think about was how much time was passing by, while Simeon grinned with bloody teeth and said, "You know he's long dead by now, right? This is all for nothing, you idiots." Sam vaguely recalled a time, before he met actual angels, that he believed angels were good and holy creatures. Had he ever really been that naïve?

Sam took a break from the torture by going out into the hall, and rubbing his sore hand. He just had to punch Simeon in his leering, stupid face, and he'd hurt himself more than he hurt Simeon. Punching angels was like punching cinderblocks, and he knew it. But he was just so angry and frustrated he didn't care if he broke his own knuckles.

Cass had mentioned Simeon had friends, so he did a quick survey, and made sure the angel warding was still in place. They'd never find him or Cass here. This place was one big angelic blind spot right now. If Hannah was looking for them, she was out of luck.

Sam took a moment to have a drink and settle his nerves. He had to approach this problem logically, because his emotions were getting in the way of being effective. If only it were that easy to turn them on and off.

Cass joined him shortly, looking pensive, which was never a good sign. "He's not cracking, is he?"

Cass shook his head. "Not now. But he will eventually."

"And how long is eventually? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month?"

"I don't know. It's possible."

Sam wished he had Cass's natural sangfroid about all of this. But that seemed to come naturally to most angels. "Dean doesn't have that kind of time."

"I know."

"So what do we do?"

Cass shrugged helplessly. "Keep at it."

Sam shook his head. "Not acceptable. We're spinning on wheels here."

Cass shot him one of his rare impatient looks. Well, it was rare for Sam to see it. To hear him tell it, Dean had seen it a lot. "Then what would you suggest?"

He threw up his hands in disgust. He didn't think he'd broken any knuckles, but they were definitely bruised. "I don't know. Do we know anybody who …" Sam trailed off, as he suddenly realized that yeah, they did know someone who specialized in this.

Cass cocked his head curiously. "Who what?"

"I have an idea. Follow me."

Sam went to a different chamber in the Bunker, one with a huge devil's trap as a permanent part of the décor. He started setting up the spell, and Cass must have figured out what he was doing, because he started pitching in. They soon assembled all of the ingredients, and Sam threw a lit match in the urn, which flared up with a scent like charcoal and sulfur.

After a moment, Crowley appeared in the center of the devil's trap, and sighed. "I really need to change my summoning number," he said. He then glanced at him and Cass. "Moose, Dudley. What do you want now?"

Sam decided there was no help for it. He was just going to have to lay his cards on the table. "We need your help."

"Oh, do you? I could have told you that years ago."

Cass leaned over, and whispered, "Dudley?"

"Dudley Do-Right." At Cass's baffled expression, he whispered, "I'll explain later." Sam returned his gaze to Crowley, who looked more bored than anything else. "An angel has taken Dean and put him in another dimension. We need to find him."

Crowley nodded, but his mouth briefly twisted into an interested frown. "Huh. That's a good idea. Wish I'd thought of that. But I don't see how I can help you, as dimension hopping is more of a feathered thing."

"We have the angel who did it," Cass said. "He refuses to talk."

It took a moment, but it finally landed. "Oh," Crowley said. For a split second, he looked almost happy about it, but then he went back to playing it cool and disinterested. Always the salesman, looking for a better bargaining position. "You want me to crack him."

"You've done it before," Sam pointed out.

"Yes, and I can't pretend it doesn't make me all tingly in the nether regions, but why the hell would I do such a thing for you? I'm not your pool boy. I don't answer to your beck and call."

"You're trapped here until we release you." Sam said.

"Or until I call for back up. This isn't moving me, boys."

Cass leveled a stern gaze at him. "Do it or I smite you."

Crowley dipped his head. "That's a bit better, but I'm still not completely feeling it."

Sam had a feeling he was going to be this way. So he took aim with the only thing he had to bargain with. "I'll owe you a favor."

Crowley raised an eyebrow at him, faintly smiling. "Now that's more like it. Although, to be brutally honest, I'd rather Squirrel owe me the favor. No offense, Moose, but you're not really my type, and I have enough Poindexters on the payroll."

Crowley really loved to hear himself talk, didn't he? He seemed to think he was the funniest guy in all of Heaven or Hell. It was probably true of Heaven, but Sam was sure there had to be at least a couple of genuine comedians in Hell. The odds alone supported it. "Dean doesn't know about this. This is just between us. Understood?"

He grinned in an unsettlingly gleeful manner. "Ooh, the Winchesters keeping secrets from each other? That never ends well. I kind of want to see that happen now. I love when you get all soap opera with each other." Crowley clapped his hands together. "Fine, we have a deal. Now, if you'd release me, and show me where the pigeon is, I'll start barbecuing him."

Cass pulled Sam aside, looking concerned. "Owing him a favor? I don't think that's wise, Sam."

"Probably not, but do you have a better idea?"

From the way Cass frowned at him, he didn't.

Okay, yes, it was intensely stupid to bargain with devils, and especially Crowley, but he really didn't have much choice right now. Sam figured he'd have time to repent in leisure, but at least Dean would hopefully be back when he did so.

* * *

Despite this being a remarkably shitty day in an unending string of them, Dean knew he was lucking out here.

His pursuers hadn't caught up to him yet, and the map seemed to indicate the sword was up ahead about three-fourths of a mile. Of course he had no idea where to look for it, if there'd be a big sign saying "Sword here" or what, but one problem at a time.

Right now, the muscles in his legs were starting to burn, and his lungs were just about screaming that they weren't getting enough air. Also, his back and shoulder were killing him where he impacted the tree, and he was pretty sure he had a huge lump forming on his jaw, right where the Leviathan hit him. Fugly assholes.

But he pushed himself on, because he was so close to his goal. His body probably wouldn't forgive him for this for a while, but hey, sleep when he's dead. The Winchester motto.

The end point of the sword search brought him to a large, circular clearing that had a dead tree in the center. Not just any dead tree; this was a blackened, gnarled talon of tree, like it started curling in on itself as it died. Dean originally thought maybe someone had set it on fire, but the blackness was not char. It was discolored, almost rotted. Poisoned?

He stepped towards it, curious, but paused, as something was setting off alarm bells. Since everything here was, that wasn't a huge help, but he looked around as the hairs rose on the back of his neck.

Dean felt it took him too long to figure it out, but he finally did. It was quiet, save for the sound of the river. His pursuers had stopped, or backed off, which was just wrong. Why the fuck would they do that? Unless the wendigo ate them all, but that was unlikely in this amount of time.

There was a crunch of leaves, and he looked around to find himself being surrounded in a wide circle by about ten monsters. Most were vampires, but there were a few Leviathans scattered around. The vampires were growling, showing fangs, while the Leviathans remained in their normal guise for the moment. One of the vampires, a solidly built man wearing a pea coat, smirked at him. "Look at this, guys. The food came to us."

Dean did his best to keep an eye on everyone (impossible), while he grabbed one of his machetes. He had the scythe in his right hand, and the machete in his left. He wasn't much of a switch hitter, but he could do it if he had to. Dean was kind of proud to say he could do almost anything if he absolutely had to. It was just the absolutely had to part that sucked donkey balls. "I don't suppose you'd like to discuss this?" Dean asked.

The monsters leered at him, almost laughing. Then they attacked.


	6. Last January

_**6 –Last January**_

His world had become pain and blood. The minute it stopped, Dean knew that was the minute he was dead.

He was losing the fight, but he couldn't stop. It was down to just six living monsters now, but he'd taken damage, and he knew he might not recover from it. He was a creature of pure instinct now, all muscle memory and training, as his consciousness was spinning like a broken carnival ride, and pain was the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground. A vampire – or maybe it was a Leviathan, he didn't really remember – had ripped a big chunk out his left forearm, and his blood was like chum in the water, driving them to furious heights, while Dean felt himself getting weaker and weaker. He was losing too much blood. But he couldn't stop.

So he had gotten himself all wrong. What a shock. His body still wanted to live, and he knew that because he felt like he was having an out of body experience, watching himself fight. In spite of the chunk out of his left arm, he was still holding on to the machete, and he buried it in the neck of a vampire, while his scythe sliced through the head of another vampire. He was grabbed around the midsection and lifted off his feet, and he used this to kick an oncoming vampire in the face.

Dean was thrown violently to the ground, the pain sizzling down his spine, but he still lashed out and beheaded a Leviathan with the scythe. But a vampire sunk his teeth into his left arm, ripping the machete away and taking advantage of all the free blood spewing from the wound.

He meant to behead him, but a Leviathan had his right arm, and now another vampire was kneeling on his stomach, pinning him down and pressing all the air out of him. He tried to inhale, but couldn't. "Wow, Human, who knew you'd last so long?" Pea coat, the guy kneeling on him, said, his face split in a gloating smile. "You did real well. You should be proud of yourself. I honestly have no idea how you're conscious right now. Boy, you can take a beatin'. That's a real art. I bet you were a badass when you were alive, huh?"

Dean was going to tell him to fuck off, but he couldn't get any air. In fact, it now dawned on him he might suffocate before they ate him alive. Was that bad or good?

That's why it was such a shock when a blade separated pea coat's head from his neck.

Dean bucked off his body and gulped air like a dying man, which was apt, because he was. The vampire stopped sucking on his left arm, just in time to get beheaded.

The Leviathan still had his right arm, so Dean scrabbled blindly for a weapon, found something, and smashed the Leviathan in the throat with it. It turned out to be one of the blunt weapons one of the vampires was carrying, but the Leviathan was stunned enough to loosen his grip, and allowed Dean to pull away. He rolled up to his feet, ignoring his wavering consciousness and a growing weakness, and found that his scythe was tossed to him by the guy who had beheaded pea coat. He was a broad shouldered, reasonably handsome guy with short brown hair and a scruff of a beard, and he had fangs. Another vampire? Why the hell did he turn on his own guys?

Dean didn't worry about it just yet. He sliced the head off the Leviathan, and turned in time to chop a lunging vampire completely in half through the midsection. His guts splattered about a foot away from him.

Dean turned, grasping the scythe, ready to slice the first monster he saw, but there was no one left. Dean had killed most of them, and the new vamp had batted clean up on the scraps. Holy fuck, he was still alive. How did that happen?

He eyed the remaining vampire warily. Dean kept the scythe raised, but the vampire, who had his own machete type weapon, was holding it at his side. "Thanks for the help."

"No problem. You almost had 'em. That was real impressive. You're a hunter, aren't you?" He had a vague Southern accent, and for some reason, Dean found that jarring.

"Yeah. And you're a vampire."

"Yeah."

"So how are we resolving this?"

The vampire tucked the machete away, and held out his open hands to show he had no hidden weapons. "The name's Benny. And if I wanted to kill you, I could have just joined in with the fang bang. Or, I could just let you bleed to death now."

He followed Benny's eyes to his left arm, which was still bleeding profusely, and seemed to be letting all the cold inside his body. God, he was tired. "So what, you're figuring it'd be a shame to waste it?"

Benny took off his belt, and at Dean's look, he said, "Tourniquet. Unless you'd rather bleed to death."

"Why are you helping me?" He didn't trust this at all. It felt like a trap.

"Truthfully? 'Cause I want outta this place, and you're my best bet. But you gotta be alive or none of us are gettin' outta here. May I?"

The world was starting to spin. He had no choice in the matter. He let him do this, or they just waited a minute or two and Dean would lose consciousness, and Benny could drain him dry with no resistance at all. Dean nodded, lowering his scythe to half mast, and keeping an alert eye on Benny.

The vampire moved slow, picking up his wariness, and he cinched his belt higher up on Dean's arm, until it hurt like one of those fucking blood pressure cuffs in a doctor's office. But the blood wasn't quite gushing out at the same volume as before. Dean still felt cold, weak, and a little dizzy, but he figured he could power through. What was his other option?

As soon as the belt was secure, Benny backed away, hands raised. Dean took a moment to catch his breath, and tried to will some strength into himself. When his adrenaline crashed, and it would, he was going to go down hard. He just needed to postpone that as long as possible. "Name's Dean," he said.

Benny nodded. "Nice to meet you, Dean. What brings a live Human to Purgatory anyway? I bet there are better places for a hunting trip."

Was there any harm in the truth? Probably not. "I'm after Godslayer."

Benny's eyebrows raised. "That's real? I thought that was just the Leviathans bein' squirrely."

"You've heard of it?"

"Yeah, the sword meant to take out God." He shook his head. "Good luck to 'em, but they're never gettin' out of here. Why do you need it? You takin' out God?"

"If I could find him I would. But right now it's for Lucifer."

Benny looked genuinely surprised. "Lucifer? Holy shit boy, are you crazy?"

Dean gestured to their surroundings. "I'm in Purgatory, aren't I?"

That made him smile. "True. You're nuttier than an outhouse rat, aren't you? No wonder you're doin' so well down here."

Dean would have admitted that if he trusted him, but he still wasn't sure he should. His left arm was colder than ever, and it was starting to turn red under the belt, but he knew this was all part of the deal. A tourniquet cut off blood flow, and that was never pretty. "So Benny, how am I supposed to help you get out of here?"

"There's a portal that allows Humans to exit Purgatory –"

"Yeah, I know. I have a map."

His brow furrowed in confusion. "There's maps to Purgatory?"

"There is if you know a crossroads demon named Crowley. So what's your play?"

"There's a spell that would allow you to take me, in a non-corporeal form, through the portal with you. Then you can reunite me with my body Earthside."

Dean snorted. "Just what the world needs, another vampire. Hate to break it to you, buddy, but there ain't a lot of food left on Earth for you."

He looked genuinely confused. He didn't know. Well, how could he? It was possible the news hadn't filtered back to Purgatory yet. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the Apocalypse. Heaven and Hell fought their battle on Earth, and Hell won. There are lots of dead people, and lots of demons. That's why I'm looking to kill Lucifer. It's the last chance to save whatever's left of humanity."

Benny eyes widened slightly in shock. "You're kidding. The fucking Apocalypse?"

"Yep. So if you're looking for snacks, you're out of luck."

Benny scratched his head, considering it. "Truth be told, I wanted to get back topside to get revenge on my maker. He must still be alive 'cause he isn't here."

"The guy who turned you?" If he was telling the truth, Dean respected that. Most people didn't ask to be turned into vampires, they were just unlucky sons of bitches. He should know, since he was almost turned once. "That's a good reason."

Benny's hazel eyes narrowed. "Are you really gonna try and fight Lucifer?"

"I have to. I have no choice."

"You are one brave son of a bitch." He paused briefly. "Want some help?"

Dean was genuinely surprised by that. "What? Why would you want to kill Lucifer?"

He gave him a grim smile. "I'm goin' up to kill one monster. Why not make it two?"

What could a vampire do against Lucifer? He'd be no better off than him or Crowley. Lucifer was all powerful. But, then again, Luci would not be expecting a vampire at the party. If it put him off his game for even a split second, that was time Dean could use. "First things first. What have you heard about this sword?"

Benny shrugged. "Not much. I figured the Levis were just talkin' shit."

"The map I have says it's here somewhere." Dean did a visual search of the bodies, in case one of them had a sword, but nope, didn't look like it. It was just a blood soaked clearing now. Except for one thing. "What's the deal with that tree?"

"Way before my time, supposedly a bunch of Levis had a fight here, and that's why nothing grows in this specific area. Concentrated Levi goo – I mean, I guess it's blood, but it smells more like bile – is toxic. I'm guessin' the tree got a bigger dose than most."

First of all, gross. But the second thing Dean wondered was why the Leviathans even left this poor diseased tree standing. Considering how strong they were, they could have easily torn it up. Was there a reason they didn't? Dean walked over to it, looking for some kind of sign he was on the right track. He saw none.

He slung the scythe over his left shoulder, grabbed his machete, and started hacking into the dead tree.

The bark came off in huge clumps, like dead skin peeling off a corpse, and it felt spongy and soft in a way that harkened to decay. Benny picked up one of the bladed weapons the dead vampires had, and started helping him, chopping through on the other side. Eventually, Dean's machete rang off something hard and metallic.

Buried in the heart of the dead tree was a sword.

It was hard to see, because it was black. Finally Dean uncovered enough to reach for it and pull it out.

The blade was as dark as obsidian, and slightly curved, almost like a scimitar, but smaller, and still came to a wickedly sharp point. Holding it, it not only felt heavier than it looked, but Dean would almost swear he was feeling palpable waves of doom radiating from it. It smelled like death and blood and burnt chrome. "Holy shit," Benny said. "Not only is it real, but all my vampire senses are telling me this is total bad news."

"I'm getting a sense of that too." He examined it, liking the heft of it in his hands. This did feel like it could take out a god. "Is this made of Leviathan blood?"

"I dunno. You'd think they couldn't turn it into something solid … but all I know about them is they're crazy dangerous. Anything's possible here, I guess."

Which brought up a question Dean hadn't thought of before. Would this hold together only in Purgatory? Would it not work topside? There was only one way to find out, wasn't there?

Dean turned, returning the machete to a sheathe on his back, and hefted Godslayer to his shoulder. Yeah, it smelled kind of bad, and gave him a slight case of the willies, but it also felt like power. Like he could kill anything with this thing. "Thanks for the help, Benny."

"Wait. We gotta deal or what?"

Dean turned and eyed him skeptically. "I didn't agree to anything."

"How you gonna get back to the portal in the shape you're in?" Benny asked. "Yeah, you got Godslayer, but say it gets knocked out of your hand. Then what? I can help you make it back."

"In exchange for me bringing you back to Earth."

He smirked. "And don't forget fightin' Lucifer. I mean, you gotta try that once, if only for the story."

Dean still didn't trust him. He was a vampire after all, and they were all bad news. But, if he was at all serious about fighting Lucifer … it was just him and Crowley right now, and Dean knew better than to count on Crowley for much. And would one more monster walking the Earth's surface make any difference now? He couldn't see how it could. Unless he beat Lucifer, the Earth was irrevocably fucked. It might be too late as it was.

Also, Benny was right. Dean felt surprisingly light and hollow right now. He might make it to the portal if he really pushed himself, but maybe not much longer after that. He'd taken a real beating, and was lucky to survive. He wouldn't survive another attack remotely like that, and oh shit, had he actually forgotten about the fucking wendigo? "Lucifer's probably gonna kill us all," Dean warned him. "You'll be back here like you never left."

Benny casually shrugged, like the idea had already occurred to him and he'd thought it through. "Then I just hafta wait for the next Human who ventures down here. Or my maker, if Lucifer's people eventually take him out too."

And Benny called him crazy? Benny was nutso too. Weirdly enough, sometimes Dean liked that in a person. "Let's get to the portal. We'll discuss it there."

Benny grinned, and hefted his own bladed weapon. "Sounds good to me."

Dean consulted the map, and he and Benny headed off together. This was crazy, right? This was totally insane. What the hell did he think he was doing?

But, hey, Apocalypse. Sometimes you had to take your allies where you could get them.


	7. Dominion

_**7 – Dominion**_

Sam would swear this was taking longer than before. But then again, he was unaware of the last time this happened. It happened to him, yes, when Gadreel had taken over his body, but he had no conscious memories of it. Gadreel had taken them with him. So Sam was really guessing. He was just damn impatient, and wanted to get Dean back already.

Sam was researching, because that was how he handled stress when he was afraid to get drunk, and Cass was keeping him company, although Cass seemed even more anxious than he was, which was almost impossible. But Sam soon got tired of Cass's pacing and OCD-like touching up of the angel wards, and finally looked away from his laptop. "Cass, stop."

"This is my fault."

"No, it's not," Sam said, although part of him wondered if it was. Which was uncharitable and wrong, because how was Cass to know one of his long lost soldiers was still alive, and had a mad on for him that verged on pathological? That was in no way Cass's fault. "This is Simeon's fault."

Cass turned to look at him, and he appeared genuinely sad. Sam had never seen Cass this emotional before. "I did fail them, you know. Heaven. I very nearly destroyed it."

Sam sighed, and wasn't sure what to say. Because of course Cass was right. But what was that saying about sin and casting the first stone? "And I broke the last seal and very nearly caused the Apocalypse. We've all screwed up in terrible ways, Cass. All we can do is try and fix the things we can, and hopefully not fuck up as badly in the future."

Cass collapsed in a chair, looking utterly miserable. "I should be the one being tortured, not him."

"He took Dean. Don't lose sight of that. Okay, he was hurt, and he has a right to feel betrayed, and you did awful things. Hell, Cass, you've done awful things to us too. But we know you weren't exactly in your right mind at the time, and I know hurting Dean is the last thing you'd ever want to do." He didn't think Cass wanted to hurt him either, but Dean was really a stopping point. They were best friends, and quite possibly the only real friend each other had ever had. It was both really touching, and really extremely sad. Cass was an angel who was still figuring out how to be around people (both Humans and his own), and Dean was a person who was slightly more comfortable dealing with monsters than other Humans on a genuine level. Except kids. Dean would never admit it, but he had a soft spot for kids. "And he may already be dead. We don't know. But whatever you did to Simeon, it doesn't justify what he's done to Dean."

Cass nodded, his expression leveling out to his more common pensive one. "No, it does not."

Crowley suddenly appeared in the room, wiping his hands on a square of black silk. "Well, it's not exactly everything you're looking for, but it's a clue."

They followed him back to the angel dungeon, where Simeon was still chained to the chair inside the weakening sigil, with silver needles now sticking out of his forehead like a mock crown of thorns. There was a little blood on Simeon's face, and the floor, but Crowley was somehow as spotless as always. Was he made of Teflon? Everything just slid off him like it never existed in the first place.

Simeon looked unconscious, but Crowley, with a smug smile, said, "Hold on to your knickers, ladies." He pushed one of the needles near Simeon's left temple, and Simeon started saying something in Enochian, over and over again.

Cass's spine stiffened, and he looked startled. Crowley just looked smug. "What's he saying?" Sam didn't know Enochian that well, although something about it sounded familiar.

"Lucifer," Cass said.

Sam felt a cold shock that shot straight from his stomach to his toes. Lucifer? What the hell was that supposed to mean? "He handed Dean over to Lucifer in an alternate dimension?" Sam did his best to repress his shudder, but he wasn't sure he succeeded.

This was worse than anything he could ever have imagined. Dean in Lucifer's hands? Holy shit. Was there any chance he was still alive? Or sane?

* * *

Crowley wondered how much of Maine he should actually have paved once he took the reigns on this mother.

It wasn't that he had anything against wilderness per se, it was just so … same-y. And yes, he wasn't having Hell stay up here, because frankly the weather sucked, and he hated having all these monsters in his place, getting dirt on his soil. Seriously, some of them were worse than pigs. But he felt he should pave Maine as a kind of farewell present to the Earth. They'd had a hard time with this whole Apocalypse business, they could probably use a gift.

Crowley checked his watch, and tried to do the math. Was Dean very late, or extremely late? He really should have popped through the portal by now. Did he really get his stupid ass wasted in Purgatory? What an ignominious end for a hunter who was as dumb as a box of rocks, and yet as lethal as a chainsaw made of ricin. Also, surprisingly pretty. That really threw Crowley the first time he saw him, because most of the hunters he had encountered before had been burnouts with beer guts and acne scars that left their faces looking like particularly treacherous parts of the moon. Even Sam had surfer guy good looks. How they sprung from John Winchester was a great mystery. Their Mom must have been hot, or the Winchesters had an extremely attractive mailman. Possibly both.

Crowley considered his potential plan Bs – did he know any other Humans stupid, desperate, and dangerous enough to make a run through Purgatory? – when light flared amongst the many bloody stupid trees in this part of the forest. "Finally!" Did he want Luci to find them? "Did you stop for a spa treatment? We should have been out of here thirty minutes ago."

When Dean finally limped out of the trees, it was easy to see why he was late. He looked like an ogre had chewed him up and spit him out. The ogre had left him mostly intact but had bitten a piece out of his left arm, and he was holding his right arm, the one holding the black sword, a little funny. He had blood and black goo smeared on his face, completing the disheveled hobo – or perfectly fine Brooklyn hipster – look he was going for. "Shut up, Crowley. And get me to Louisiana."

"I beg your pardon?"

Dean looked half dead, and he seemed to be barely standing up, but that winning attitude of his was still intact. "I just killed my way through Purgatory, and I got the goddamn sword. You owe me this much."

"Owe you? That's –" Crowley noticed that there was a weird glowing thing in Dean's right arm. "Is that a soul? Did you bring a soul out of Purgatory? Are you on drugs?"

"He helped me, I'm helping him. We made a deal, and I'm a man of my word."

Crowley shook his head in disbelief. Box. Of. Rocks. "Funny thing. Have any of these deals you've made, with demons and beasties, ever worked for you? If you are a closet masochist, it's time to come out. It's the Apocalypse and no one's alive to give a shit anymore."

Dean was glaring daggers at him. For a man clearly on the verge of passing out, he packed a lot of fuck you in a gaze. "Do this, or I'm done."

Oh good, the diva hissy fit. Crowley was expecting this later in the game, but of course Dean had to go off script ahead of time.

So, to mollify the little bugger, he took his arm and teleported them to Louisiana, never telling Dean that getting out of Maine post-haste was actually a wise idea. Luci was probably aware a portal briefly opened, even if he didn't know what it was or why. No point in being around when his hench demons scouted the area.

Dean staggered once Crowley let him go, and Crowley rolled his eyes again. He grabbed his left arm, and ripped off the belt holding what little blood he still had in his body in its place. "Hey," Dean protested, and tensed to pull his arm away. But then he noticed his limb was intact again, and gave Crowley a puzzled glance. "Can't have David crippled before he meets Goliath, can we? We have enough odds stacked against us."

"You can heal people?"

"I'm Crowley. I can do whatever I bloody want." Wasn't that obvious by now? But, again, box of rocks. He had to assume he had the accumulated memory of a goldfish. "Now, is there somewhere specifically in the overly humid, hungover state you wanted to go, or are you just after beads?"

It ended up Dean wanted to go to the old Lafitte estate, which was one of those decadent, overgrown ruins that would have made a great setting for a horror movie, if there was anyone left to make them anymore. Crowley wasn't sure Dean would actually go through with this – release a beast on Earth? Intrepid monster hater Dean? – but Crowley watched, somewhat amused and somewhat horrified, as he found a grave in what passed for the backyard, and dug it up. Was this a joke?

Dean did indeed recite a resurrection ritual that was pretty obscure, and cut the soul out of his arm. After a minute, they were joined by a guy in old fashioned clothes, and Crowley, even after all of this, couldn't believe his eyes. "A fanger? All this for a blood muncher? Did you miss the whole "Humans are an endangered species" thing?"

Dean actually shook the bloodsucker's hand before turning to give him a bratty look. "One more doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference at the end of the world, does it? Besides, he's gonna help us with Lucifer."

Nosferatoad nodded. "Why not? Sounds fun."

Crowley honestly wasn't sure which one to glare at. Did they both suffer a similar head injury? "And what can you do against Lucifer, twilight? Except get killed in three seconds."

The vampire eyed him with skepticism. "And what can you do, demon? He's your King. You'll get squashed flat."

He did not like this jumped up little mosquito. Dean stepped between them, hands up. "Hey, we're all on the same side here, so let's act like it. Crowley, this is Benny. Benny, this is Crowley."

"Yeah, I figured," Benny said.

Crowley eyed Dean, aware that this was yet another instance of Dean picking up a stray. "In Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory, you found male admirers. Two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. I think you need to be more honest with yourself." He didn't even mention the fact that they were all handsome men, although you'd think that went without saying.

Dean scowled at him, like he thought it was a dig. But Crowley was being perfectly honest. He had major issues he seemed oblivious to; he was so repressed it was kind of hilarious. The thing Dean seemed most afraid of was himself. How funny and how sad. "Benny has a point, Crowley. We have the sword, but we don't have a plan."

"I have a plan, I just haven't told you yet."

Dean didn't look amused. He rarely did, unless he was drinking or making a terrible joke. "Now's the time."

Crowley pointed at the vamp. "And you trust him? A random pick up you brought out of Purgatory? He could be on team Luci for all we know."

The vampire snorted. "Yeah, 'cause you demons love us vampires so much."

Okay, point to the parasite. There was no love lost between demons and the lower monster classes. They ate perfectly good Humans which should belong to them alone, and they were messy and impertinent. They didn't seem to know their place, which was the bottom of the food chain. It went demons, angels, Humans, and everything else. He knew of some animals that ranked above beasties. Tigers, for example. "That doesn't mean you're not trying to work a deal of your own, sunshine."

The vampire pasted on a mean face that would only scare a naïve child, but Dean looked at him, and he seemed to pull back his temper. Oh, love at first sight. So cute. Dean turned a mean look on him, but Crowley was unimpressed. "I'm trusting you. I can't get much stupider."

Crowley laughed. At least Dean had some self-awareness. "Just when I start doubting your worth, you bring it back around. Fine, but if Tennessee Williams' Dracula turns on us, I'm out of there and you're on your own."

"I'm on my own now."

Ooh, attitude Dean was back. Kind of a turn on. That's why he got all these male admirers. The macho belligerence thing was catnip. "Hurt my feelings, why don't you? Fine. We cannot get the jump on Luci. He knows you'll try something, Dean, and I doubt I'm off his radar. So all we can do is fight him in ways he won't expect."

"Such as?" Dean prompted.

Cute, yes, but not the sharpest knife on the altar. "He'll expect a physical attack from you, so you attack with magic. He'll expect a demonic attack from me, so I attack physically. Count Chocula, do what you want as long as you stay out of my way. I doubt he's expecting you at all."

Dean got a look on his face similar to when you pretended to throw a ball for a dog, but really hid it in your hand. Pure befuddlement. "What? I can't attack him with magic."

"Yes you can. I know you've thrown spells before, Dean. You're a Hunter. I realize that was more Sam's thing, but you have a tendency to learn just enough to get a job done. I'll teach you a couple of good ones. Then give me the sword and stand back. I imagine the blood splatter will be amazing."

"Hold on a second," Dean said. "Who put you in charge?"

"I did. What's your plan to get rid of Lucifer, Dean? Stab him?"

Benny's eyes narrowed. "How are you still alive with your head jammed so far up your own ass? It's a demon thing, right?"

Crowley glared at him, and wondered how upset Dean would be if he turned him into a toad. "Calm your dog, Dean, or I will."

But Dean looked at his new boyfriend with interest. "Got a better idea?"

"Not sure. Lucifer's all powerful and will tear us to pieces as soon as he sees us, right? So we should make ourselves harder to see."

Crowley scoffed and rolled his eyes. "An invisibility spell? Lucifer sees through magic of that kind. We might as well wear neon signs flashing "Big Dumb Tossers Here"."

Benny shook his head, still gazing at Crowley with a level of contempt he did not like to see in lesser beings. Someone needed to teach this leech a lesson. "I ain't talkin' invisibility, black eyes. I'm talkin' about getting lost in a crowd."

Dean actually seemed intrigued by this stupidity. "How so?"

Jesus Christ. Dean and his vampire boy toy were going to get them all killed. Crowley wondered if it was too late to just leave them behind and go to plan B.

If only he had a plan B.


	8. Meet Your Master

_**8 – Meet Your Master**_

Benny's plan was fucking mental and really could never work. So Dean was all for it.

If they were going to die trying to take out Lucifer – and Dean was fairly certain they were all going to die, whether they succeeded or not – might as well swing for the fences. All the fences. There was nothing left to lose. This was the final push, the last stand, all or nothing against Lucifer. If they didn't throw everything they had into it, they deserved to be crushed like bugs.

Crowley didn't like it, but he expected that. Crowley didn't like any idea that wasn't his. Dean thought the best way forward to combine both plans, but he had to short circuit a hissy fit by Crowley to push it onward. He did, because there was no plan without him, and Crowley knew it. And resented the shit out of it. But for all his bluster, Crowley knew, if there was a final blow to be delivered to Lucifer, it wasn't going to be him doing it. There was an inevitable feeling around this that Dean really didn't like, but he'd felt it before, and he knew what it meant. The Winchesters started this. It was up to one of them to finish it, and he was the only one left.

He also knew he shouldn't trust Benny, as he barely knew him at all. Yeah, he kept his bargain in Purgatory, and he never could have made it out of there without his help. He was still a vampire, and there was no way his intentions were totally benign. But he drove Crowley crazy, and that was just another reason to like him.

Maybe Dean should have known that demons and other monsters didn't really get along, but it struck him as kind of a surprise. He really took it for granted that all monsters essentially got along unless competing for something. Clearly there was some kind of hierarchy that he wasn't a party to, being a stupid Human and all.

Dean had his own ideas to throw into the mix, and Benny supported them, mainly because it pissed Crowley off. He quickly learned how to use Benny's antagonism towards the demon to his advantage.

They knew where Lucifer was, because he was hardly hiding it. He was currently in Las Vegas, because, according to Crowley, he was a "big fan" of the Stephen King book The Stand, which had Satan and his followers in Vegas. Dean almost asked how Lucifer got around to reading Stephen King books, but trashed the whole idea. Some things deserved to be left a mystery.

Truth be told, Crowley actually had some good ideas. Attacking Lucifer in unexpected ways might throw him off his game. It wouldn't buy them a lot of time, but if they played their cards right, they could still use it. They had to stack these seconds into a window of time they could use to finish him off. Time would beyond tight; one fuck up and they were doomed. But they were doomed anyway, so maybe he was just looking at this wrong.

Crowley knew a spell that would supposedly screw up Lucifer's powers. The problem was, it wouldn't last long ("a few seconds"), and since it was an angel power draining spell, he would know it, he would know who did it, and the second the spell broke his power might actually come back stronger. So they needed to be strategic in its deployment. The problem was, it was a complex spell, and if Dean fucked up one thing, it wouldn't work. Saving it until the end was super risky, but exactly what they needed to do.

Dean tried to give Crowley some pointers on using the sword, but he got offended and started ranting about how he was "disemboweling peasants before his great-grandfather was a twinkle in some sad bastard's eye", but he had a feeling Crowley was exaggerating. Also, Crowley was not the disemboweling type. Oh sure, he'd have it done, and he'd probably watch, but get guts on his shoes? Never.

Benny's plan was so weird, and so dangerous, it was quite possible it could kill Dean before they even fought Lucifer. But if it worked it would be a hell of a lot of fun to see.

Benny was also hoping to find some monsters who might want to get in on the action too. Dean was a bit more dubious about that. Why would any monsters want to doom themselves to death for no reason? But even Crowley was forced to admit that some might be into it, for the simple fact that Lucifer had stripped their food supply to the bone, and some of his demons were hunting them down. Soon the world would not only be human free, for all intents and purposes, but monster free as well. There'd just be demons. Maybe a few humans kept as "cows", which was an actual thing Crowley said to him. Dean had to restrain himself to keep from punching his smug face in.

Because of the risks involved, Benny left to scout Vegas for potential targets – being a vampire, the Croatan virus meant shit to him – and Crowley showed Dean Lucifer's current "palace". It wasn't the penthouse suite of some insane luxury hotel, like Dean expected, but the floor of a casino. Lucifer, like all angels, didn't need to eat or sleep, and for some reason, he liked wallowing in the insane decadence of humanity. He thought the casino, with its half mile of slot machines, gaming tables, empty bars and empty buffets was the perfect representation of this. Dean's only argument was strip clubs might be slightly better, but since they no longer had strippers in them, that probably wasn't true. But the fact that the Apocalypse's final battle would be in an empty casino was … not irony. Sad? This was what the Human race was reduced to – siccing monsters on Lucifer in a gambling pit.

And it was the best shot they had. Maybe that was the worst part.

Crowley had a place on the California/Nevada border – of course he did – and it was warded to Hell and back (no pun intended), so no matter proximity, Lucifer wasn't going to know they were there. When Benny came back, he brought some monster friends, and added a new layer of crazy to the plan. It was so nutzoid Dean had to leave the room because he couldn't stop laughing. Even if this plan didn't work, he kind of loved it for its monumental wackiness. This was everything plus the kitchen sink. There was no way it could work, right? No way. But fucking hell, it was going to fun to fail.

The problem was, Benny's monster buddies kept looking at Dean like he was food, or the Devil, or both, and Dean had to suppress the urge not to gut them right there. But Crowley put the hammer down, letting everybody know the first being to spill blood in his place would be eating their own intestines for all eternity, and that was that.

Benny had found a great place, just on the outskirts of Vegas, full of exactly what they needed. There were still some in Vegas too, even though Lucifer's guys had mostly cleared out the city. It was demon central now, and going in there was beyond insane. You had to be a special kind of stupid to even think about going there.

So they headed out before dawn.

Dean stole a motorcycle, and took off to the outskirts Benny had found earlier. It was a quaint little suburb, where much of the better class of service industry people that kept Vegas running in the old days lived. Now it was a looted, broken hellscape, full of people driven homicidally mad by the Croatoan virus. The loud motorcycle brought some of them out, but Dean made doubly sure they knew he was here by coming to brief stops in the center of the street, and shouting, "Come and get it, you sad motherfuckers! Meat on the hoof!"

They did too. Neighborhoods that looked sandblasted and dead, as empty as any desert, suddenly teemed with Croatoan victims, hungry to tear him apart. He double checked the gas tank, because if he ran out of fuel now, he was so fucked it wasn't even funny.

He made it to the Vegas city limits with a small army of homicidal motherfuckers on his tail, more than he'd ever seen in one place since this Apocalypse began. The Croatoans wouldn't hurt Lucifer, but that wasn't why they were coming. They were a drunken hockey brawl waiting to happen. Nothing but chaos. Lucifer thought his city was all clean? Not anymore it wasn't. The rats were back and they were hungry.

That was part one.

The next part came into play by the time he was headed towards the Strip. The monsters who decided to take part in trying to carve a piece out of Lucifer's ass were filtering into the city now. Vampires, ghouls, kitsune, werewolves, djinn, a wide assortment of stuff he'd hunted down all his life, who depended on Humans for survival and were looking down the barrel of their own end of days. Benny was right – the monster network was fucking awesome. Word spread faster than clap at a Christian school.

That was part two.

Lucifer's demons were caught up short by the monster incursion, and then by the Croatoan mob filling the city, looking for meat. They spotted him, of course, but now the friends Benny brought home a few hours previous started filling the city, bringing more of their kind with them. Shapeshifters; dozens of Deans and Crowleys were suddenly all over Vegas. Lucifer would be able to tell the difference, yes, but his demons minions wouldn't, not until they fought them. And until then they'd be chasing their tails trying to capture or kill false leads, monsters who weren't exactly vulnerable to their demon shit (they needed silver; killing a shapeshifter without silver was pretty much impossible). Monsters who, in a pinch, could change into someone else entirely.

That was part three.

Dean abandoned the motorcycle near downtown, which had turned from a ghost town to chaos central. Some of the monsters decided to go after the Croatoan victims, even though they weren't palatable, and some of the Croatoans couldn't tell monsters from Humans, and in a frenzy simply attacked. Flesh was flying and blood was flowing, and Lucifer's minions were already overwhelmed trying to get everything under control, while others raced off after fake Deans and Crowleys. Dean had Ruby's knife, and killed a couple of demons before disappearing into the mass of creatures. They had not been crazy about working with him (especially him), one of the few hunters left, but they had no more choice than he did. It was fight for your food or die with it.

Dean paused in an alley to draw a sigil on his palm. He was afraid it would smear if he drew it before he stole the bike, even though he was drawing it in permanent marker. It was an old, weird sigil, one Crowley dug up, that Dean had never seen before. He was basically taking it on faith that it would do what he said it would do, but, again, no choice now. It was balls to the wall time.

He was already covered with demon and angel warding symbols he'd drawn on himself last night. In theory it would protect him from Lucifer's gaze until he was right in front of him, but considering how powerful he was, he wasn't counting on that. Which was why he was so nervous when he finally made his way down another alley, and caught sight of the casino that was currently Lucifer's home base. It looked unguarded, normal, but Dean knew that to be a lie.

"Now I know you're the real one," Benny said, sidling up beside him.

Dean jumped, but tried to pretend he hadn't. "That shapeshifter plan was awesome."

"Wasn't it? I hafta admit, it worked better than I thought."

Now there were demons in front of the casino, attempting to battle some djinn, who apparently were having some effect on the demons, but then suddenly the demons were jerked away as if by invisible hands, and they started screaming as they were ripped into bloody ribbons.

(Crowley's Hellhounds. Part four.)

The djinns were more than happy to let the Hellhounds drag the demons away, but then they broke from the established plan and went into the casino, after Lucifer. "Son of a bitch," Dean snapped.

"Does it matter?" Benny asked. "Luci's just gonna toast 'em where they stand, right?"

"Yeah, but I hate to get him warmed up for battle."

Benny just shrugged, watching the demons being torn apart in invisible tug of wars between Hellhounds. Well, maybe they weren't invisible to him. "I hafta admit, this has been a hoot. I'm glad you brought me back from Purgatory for this."

Dean didn't want to admit he was enjoying this, because what was there to enjoy? They were putting the pedal to the metal and speeding straight into a brick wall. From every angle, this was suicide, with the highest possible body count. And yet, Dean hadn't felt this hopeful since the world ended. Even if they didn't win – and that still seemed highly doubtful – Humanity and monster kind was going out with a bang. Go quietly into that good night? No fucking way. It was kicking and screaming and taking everyone with them they could. He could think of a no more apt end for either Human or monster kind.

Benny peered down the street, making sure the coast was relatively clear. "Okay. I'm gonna go take out whatever kind of bodyguards they got inside. Give me ninety seconds, then come on down."

"Thanks, Benny. Couldn't have done this without you."

Benny grinned, but now his vampire side was coming out, so he had lots of extraneous teeth. "No, you surely could not. See you later, or see you on the other side, brother."

Dean gave him a fist bump, and then Benny headed across the street, into the casino. He'd barely been in there ten seconds when a demon's head came rolling out the door, coming to rest against the huge water feature in front of the place. Dean was kind of sorry he hadn't had more time with Benny, because he would have been fun to hunt with. He'd proved he was good at it in Purgatory.

Part of him felt guilty for having a rapport with a monster, but … fuck it. He was dying today, right? Time to be honest and admit he felt more like himself amongst monsters than he did people. He liked people; he was doing all of this to save people. But over the years, all the hunting, the fighting, he became less and less like them. He knew what he was, and that was a Human monster, made to keep monsters from genuine Humans. That was what he was good for. He was a firewall between Humanity and everything else, but to become one, he had to leave a lot of his humanity behind. Weirdly enough, that was okay with him. He was never going to be a normal person having a normal life. His Dad saw to that. Dean was what he was, and that was barely Human. But he was okay with that. If someone had to take that hit, it might as well be him. What else was he good for?

Ninety seconds gone, he crossed the street, which was full of dead bodies now. He saw the Hellhounds had left bloody paw prints, telling him where they went.

The casino smelled like blood and broiled flesh, with just a hint of sulfur. Dean found bodies of demons Benny had left in his wake, and stepped over them, trying not to tread in their blood. Not out of respect, but because the squish noise might give him away.

The only lights on in the place came from the slot machines, tarted up like five dollar whores, all glittery lights trying to dress up something that wasn't pretty at all. The room was vast, cavernous, and he had no idea where to start. Grid search? Start left, go by quadrants. Lucifer would probably find him first.

He heard clapping, and turned to face the noise. Lucifer, still in Sam's body, was by the craps table, wearing a tuxedo for some reason. "That was awesome," Lucifer said, still clapping, and laughing just a little. "Swarming the city with monsters? Beautiful! Make 'em fight for their supper. I didn't know you had it in you, Dean."

Dean had come in visually unarmed. He held his arms out, and tried to pretend that seeing him still wearing Sammy wasn't like a hot, dull knife in his gut. "There's more monsters than people left."

"Yeah, I guess that's true. Still … way to go, champ. Took out my men. Never say die, huh? Until I kill you, of course."

Dean just stood where he was. "Come on, then. I'm here. Do it."

Lucifer grinned at him. It was mocking and evil, all teeth and confidence. He knew there was no fight here. He had won, plain and simple. Monsters could take out his demons, but they could not take out him. "Did you really think I was gonna let you off that easy, Dean?"

No, he hadn't. That was precisely what he was counting on.


	9. We Die Today

_**9 – We Die Today**_

Lucifer's grin was somehow empty and packed full of menace at the same time. Dean had no idea how he did it. It was like a really shitty superpower. "So what's the big plan here? You distract me with some bullshit attack, and then Crowley warps in and kills me? That about it?"

Dean shrugged. "Kind of."

Lucifer nodded. "I guess it's the only play you could make, right? Really shitty, though."

"Yeah, well, most of the books say there's no way to kill the Devil, so we had to make it up as we went along."

Lucifer's grin did not fade. "That's because there is no way to kill me. But I do like your hustle, Dean. I always have. Really, I like to imagine what would have happened if I wore you as a vessel. Tear up the world by hand? But we don't always get what we want, do we?" Lucifer snapped his fingers, and Dean's left leg broke like a twig.

He couldn't help it. He screamed in pain as he collapsed to the floor, reflexively grabbing his leg before he realized touching it made the pain worse. Dean wasn't sure, but he thought maybe Lucifer had broken it in a couple of different places.

Lucifer's grin was wider now. It looked like his entire face was about to split in half. "Although Sam has some really good points. Like knowing you and everything you might do. He knows you too well."

Dean found himself coughing, and wondered what Lucifer was doing to him now. He got his answer when he hoarked up some blood. Looked like there was some kind of tissue in the puddle too. He wiped his mouth, wondering if he could ever ignore the intense pain in his leg. Just breathing hurt. "You don't even wanna dismember me? Give me a fighting chance?"

He shook his head. "Oh, Dean, you poor, stupid fool. You will never have a fighting chance against me, no matter what you do." Without even looking, Lucifer held up his hand off to his right, and made a gesture. Crowley, whom Dean hadn't known had entered, went flying across the room, taking out a whole row of slot machines as he crashed to the ground. "You never had a chance in – excuse the pun – hell. But your entrance was fan-fucking-tastic. That's how you do it. End of the world, might as well go for broke. I do so love a good entrance."

Dean felt something coiling in his gut, and wondered if Lucifer had put snakes in his stomach. With Lucifer, you couldn't count anything out. He wondered how much longer he had to live.

Couldn't be long, but knowing Lucifer, it would seem like an eternity.

* * *

This was taking too long. Sam was sure Crowley was being deliberately clumsy about this. He probably liked torturing angels, and this was his way of dragging it out.

He and Cass had decided to loiter in the angel dungeon, to keep an eye on Crowley, and because they were impatient. Crowley should have pulled something more than Lucifer out of Simeon by now.

"This is grisly," Cass said, looking away as Crowley slid another long needle into Simeon's forehead.

"Yeah. But part of me wishes they were knitting needles."

Cass gave him a look out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing. Maybe he was thinking the same thing, as much as it pained him.

Suddenly, Simeon started saying something else. It was still Enochian, but there were many more syllables, and his intonation was slightly different.

Crowley looked at Cass, who had stepped forward towards Simeon. He appeared both interested and alarmed. "What's he saying?" Sam asked.

But there was no answer. Because Cass was just as suddenly gone.

Sam threw up his hands in frustration. Would giving him a head's up have really wasted that much time? "What's he saying?" he asked Crowley.

The demon was studying the tortured angel, like he wasn't completely following his ramblings. "It's … strange. It might be some kind of angel code, maybe a dimensional designation system. But amongst all the weird code stuff, he keeps saying 'Lucifer's won, the world is over, the dimension is collapsing'."

"The dimension is collapsing?" What the hell ..? Okay, first of all, dimensions could collapse? What did that mean? Could that kill Dean? If the dimension ceased to exist, would Dean cease to exist?

Sam didn't know, and wasn't sure Crowley would know. So all he could hope was Cass got Dean back here as fast as possible.

* * *

Lucifer started walking towards Dean, who was having a hard time keeping tears of pain from his eyes. His leg hurt so fucking much it was almost unbelievable. But it made perfect sense, right? Lucifer wanted him to suffer maximum agony. The physical pain was just racing to catch up with all the emotional pain. It might never do that. "C'mon, Dean, don't you want to man up through the pain and try something? Throw a knife? Curse me out? Throw a spell?"

"What's the point? You said it yourself. I can't fight you. Can't win."

Lucifer clicked his tongue. "Don't break on me now, Dean. I'm just getting started."

He let his body posture sag in surrender, and he was hardly faking it. The pain was enormous, and he was so tired. He'd hardly gotten any sleep since he did the Purgatory run. He got maybe forty minutes of shut eye before they headed out. He was weary from his bones to his soul. Part of Dean wanted to die just so he could rest. "Do you hafta keep wearing his skin?" he asked quietly.

Lucifer chuckled, walking closer. "Aww. Is little Dean sad because he misses his brother? Would you like to talk to him?"

"He's dead. We both know he's dead."

Lucifer crouched down in front of him, grinning like an idiot. He was having so much fun tormenting him; it was his favorite hobby in the world. Dean had known he wouldn't kill him right away. The whole plan relied on Lucifer torturing him. "But I know him so well. I could recreate conversations you've had with him. Hell, pick a time. How about Christmas, '92? We could cuddle up and drink hot cocoa, or, what did you call your creation? Irish cocoa. Boy, you hit the hard stuff early and never stopped, did you? Sam knew. You tried to hide it from him, but he always knew what a drunken, sad boy his brother was. Always lonely, always pretending he wasn't. Sam always felt bad for you. You couldn't hide how broken you were from him, no matter how hard you tried."

Dean let the tears of pain roll down his face, and idly dipped his fingertips in the puddle of blood he'd coughed up earlier. "Fuck off and die you monstrous piece of shit." He punched Lucifer right in the face.

It hurt like a motherfucker. Dean was pretty sure he broke two knuckles. Lucifer never even turned his head or reacted in any way. He just continued smiling. "See? That's what I want more of. The piss and vinegar Dean. The one who spits in death's face even as he dies. You're more fun to pin to a board and watch wriggle in vain."

Dean felt a deep, hideous pain inside, like maybe those snakes in his stomach were biting, and he doubled over, fighting the urge to scream or vomit. "You son of a bitch," he gritted through his teeth.

Lucifer laughed. "That's right, kid, keep up your dukes even as you're on the ropes. And Crowley, you think I don't hear that spell work?" Lucifer was up now, walking away from him. Dean started muttering the spell under his breath, drawing symbols in his own blood. Per the spell, the moment he sketched them out, they faded away. "You black eyed bastard, you know you never had a hope of defeating me, right? You're just a salesman who got too full of himself."

Dean heard some noise, but didn't know what had happened. Lucifer had gone back to where Crowley was, and standing slot machines blocked his view. It felt to Dean like something was trying to eat its way out of him, starting in his gut and chomping outward, and he had a terrible mental flash of the movie Alien. Maybe that's what Lucifer was doing to him. He kept up the spell, kept it to an exhaled whispered hidden beneath his pained panting for breath.

"Oh, the Purgatory sword?" Lucifer said, laughing. "Please. The Leviathans are the only things more full of themselves than you, Fergus. I'm sure it could take out lesser gods just fine, but that is nowhere near my league. Nice try, though. Say, who went into Purgatory and got that for you?"

Dean heard footsteps, and was not surprised when Lucifer entered his field of vision again. "Dean! Did you actually make a run through Purgatory?"

Dean just glared at him, feeling blood dribble out his mouth. The thing inside him was doing damage. Lucifer laughed and clapped again, a thrilled child on his birthday. "Fantastic! The hell that must have been. Humans can't survive Purgatory; it's way too ugly. So I guess it's official, huh? You're not Human. Congratulations, Dean. You finally lived up to your destiny. Monster hidden in Human skin. That's really why you were supposed to be the Michael sword. Not bloodline, not anything else. Just the fact that you were a ruthless killing machine. Michael really needed that. Adam was a poor, soft boy, and he had no killer instinct in him. Just think, if you said yes to Michael, you probably would've won, because you could have helped my brother kill me. Oops. Good job on ending the world there, sport."

Seemingly out of nowhere, Benny lunged at Lucifer, holding Godslayer. Lucifer plucked him out of midair, grabbing him by the throat, and ripping the sword out of his hand. It slid across the floor, landing several feet away from Dean, who was in no fit state to get up and get it. He couldn't stand, thanks to his broken leg, and his insides being shredded pretty much guaranteed if he moved an inch, he would be vomiting up his internal organs.

Lucifer made a noise of disgust. "Abomination. What are you even doing here, you little insect? Did you think a lowly thing like you could ever hurt a god like me?"

"No," Benny rasped, trying to pry Lucifer's hands from his throat. He even kicked him in the chest, but Lucifer didn't react at all. He was above physical damage.

"Really? So what the hell was this about?" Lucifer tightened his grip, and Dean could hear bones cracking in Benny's throat.

Dean held out the hand with the sigil on it. He felt energy in his palm, and Godslayer suddenly flew from its resting place, and slapped hilt first into his hand. He muttered the last words of the weakening spell.

"Buying time," Benny said.

Dean felt the spell move through him, a warm wave, and threw the sword.

Lucifer stumbled as the weakness hit him, and dropped Benny, turning to face Dean with blue fire boiling in his eyes. And the sword hit him dead center in the chest, skewering him like meat over a grill.

He grabbed its hilt, staring at Dean in disbelief. "What did you do?"

"That's for Sammy, you son of a bitch." Dean spit up more blood. Crowley told him the spell might hurt him physically, but Dean was beyond the point of caring. If Lucifer died too, he would die willingly.

Lucifer started to pull out the sword, but suddenly fell to his knees, the blue fire disappearing from his eyes. "No no no," he whispered. "You can't do this." He tried pulling out the sword once more, but then keeled over, falling on his face and driving the sword even further through his torso.

Fire erupted inside Lucifer, a bright white light that Dean could see even though he'd closed his eyes and covered them with his arm. He wondered if he was blind now, as it took over a minute for him to see anything but that livid whiteness. It was like being snow-blind.

But finally darkness rushed in, black spots that exploded in front of his eyes, and he could see again. He could still feel blood gurgling in his throat, and his leg was definitely still broken, but maybe that thing that was eating him alive was gone.

Benny crawled over to him, Lucifer's hand prints raw and red on his partially broken neck, and laughed, holding a hand out. "We fucking did it!"

Dean clasped his hand, and gave it a squeeze. "Hell yeah we did." Dean didn't know how much longer he'd be alive. A few minutes maybe. Was Crowley dead? He had no idea. Maybe he and Benny were the only part of the raiding party still alive. Dean didn't feel bad about that.

Benny looked beyond Dean, and he suddenly sat back, eyes startled. Dean glanced over, wondering if Lucifer had popped back up, and was shocked to his core.

It was Cass standing there, in his usual rumpled trench coat, looking nearly as startled as Benny. "Dean?"

"Cass." He was so happy to see him he could have cried. They brought him back. Maybe he wasn't alone anymore.

"You killed Lucifer." Cass said that as if it was amazing. Well, it was, wasn't it? Even Lucifer seemed surprised by it.

Dean nodded, and Benny whispered, "You know angels and you didn't call them in?"

"He was dead," Dean told him. "Until just this second."

Cass came over, and crouched down beside him. "This isn't your dimension, Dean. You're not supposed to be here."

"What?" Was it just the fact that he was dying, or did that just not make sense? But Cass met his eyes, and he knew he wasn't lying to him. God, he was so happy to see him, he didn't care if he made sense or not.

"In spite of that, you saved this dimension. Congratulations." Cass touched him on the forehead, and the world suddenly fell away.


	10. The Motherload

_**10– The Motherload**_

Reality reasserted itself, and Dean found himself back in the Bunker, on the floor of the main room, Cass crouched beside him. He remembered everything in a rush of memories that overlaid and contradicted his other memories, and it made his head throb like the worst hangover. "Son of a bitch," he muttered, grabbing his head. He felt a burning on his arm, something that came with sickly dark tides of rage that tugged at his consciousness, and he remembered he was wearing the Mark of Cain now. Great. Maybe he could have used that against Lucifer.

Cass must have healed his injuries, because he wasn't choking on his own blood anymore, and his leg had stopped hurting. Maybe he could even move now. Once he'd absorbed it all, he looked at Cass in confusion. "Wait, I don't get it. How did I end up there?"

Cass frowned, almost looking embarrassed. "Simeon. An old member of my garrison. He wanted to hurt me by hurting you."

"Ah." Fantastic. Psycho angels could just drop you in the middle of any goddamn reality they wanted. He had to make a note of that. "Hold on a second. I saved that dimension?"

Cass nodded. "Lucifer won the final battle in that reality. That dimension was due to collapse in on itself."

"But I killed him."

"Yes. So the collapse probably won't happen."

"What happens to the people?"

Cass shrugged. "I don't know. But with Lucifer vanquished, it's more than likely Heaven will return to Earth. It may recover, in time."

Well, that was something. He gave them a fighting chance at least, whoever was left. "Did I replace the Dean of that dimension?"

Cass shook his head. "The Dean of that dimension was dead. He was killed before Lucifer and Michael fought. Simeon simply dropped you in and nudged reality, so everyone believed you'd lived through it."

There was so much to unpack there. He had a billion questions, and wasn't sure which one to ask next. "Was I always meant to pull Benny out of Purgatory?"

Cass partially shrugged, but settled for shaking his head. "I don't know. But it does seem that way, doesn't it?"

Sam came into the room. "Dean! Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said, getting to his feet. He expected to hurt, and was kind of surprised when he didn't.

Sam hugged him, and Dean let him. He was thrilled to find he was not Lucifer's meat puppet, and alive. The Mark flared on his arm, like it had taken to doing lately in Sam's presence. He had told no one about that, because Dean hated to think what the implication of that was. The Mark didn't like Sam? Or the Mark was reminding him it hadn't had enough blood to sate it.

"I hate to break up the touching family reunion." Crowley said, joining them. "But since Dean is back and it's a win for team Venture Brothers, I suppose I should piss off now, yeah? I'll take the angel off your hands."

"No you won't," Cass said, taking a step towards him. "Simeon is to be remanded to Heaven. We decide his punishment, not you."

Crowley raised an eyebrow, clearly weighing whether it was worth an argument or not. Just from the smell of blood, Dean deduced they'd brought Crowley in to break Simeon. "I do and do for you people, and this is the thanks I get."

"On the bright side, you helped me kill Lucifer in the other dimension," Dean said, throwing him a bone.

Crowley gave him a look of genuine surprise. "Did I?" At Dean's nod, he smiled. "Of course I bloody did. Like that little berk was any kind of challenge for me." Crowley disappeared then, content with his victory. Dean didn't tell him he probably died doing it, because he wanted him gone. He'd had enough Crowley to last him a while.

Sam was now giving him a look Dean knew meant he wouldn't be satisfied until he heard every last goddamn detail. "You killed Lucifer?"

So Dean got himself a beer, and told Sam and Cass the whole story – more or less; he left a few details out – of how he, Crowley, Benny, and a shitload of monsters eventually took down Lucifer. Sam especially enjoyed the monster parade that took over Vegas. "Holy shit. What was that like?"

"It was weird."

Sam was grinning. Thankfully, it looked nothing like one of Lucifer's empty, vicious smiles. "It was fun, wasn't it?"

"Oh, it was so fun, I want to do that here."

Cass eventually left to take Simeon to Heaven, where he would probably end up in Heaven's jail, keeping Metatron's old cell warm. Dean took a break to make himself a sandwich, because now that his guts weren't being churned up by a mysterious beast, he was starving. He was also tired, even though the Mark burned and didn't want him to sleep. The Mark wanted him to go out and hunt, to find something to kill. Even in that hellish dimension, he had not missed it or its gnawing need. That other dimension had at least one good point.

"What about that vamp nest in Michigan?" he asked Sam, between gulps of beer. Sometimes, if he drank the right amount – not too much, not too little – it would numb the Mark. For just a little bit, but he still relished the respite. The Mark took a psychic toll he hadn't been prepared for, and it felt like it was stealing pieces of his sanity in increments. Dean figured he'd never been that stable to begin with, so this was no good at all.

"What about it? I was more concerned about finding you."

He nodded. "We have a job to do. Let's go finish it."

Sam scoffed, as Dean finished off his beer and stood up. "Dude, you just got back from killing Lucifer in another dimension. How about you get some rest? It'll be sun up in a couple of hours, and that's the best time for hunting vampires."

Dean was so tired, he felt like he could rest his head on the table and be out like a light. But what had been days in that dimension had been only hours in this one, and his body clock was all kinds of fucked up. And of course, the Mark was demanding blood. Rage was starting to settle in his chest, a need that would soon become a mania if he didn't feed it. He doubted it would let him sleep until he threw it some meat. "I'm too pumped to sleep. I say we hunt."

Sam gave him an exasperated look that he'd been giving him a lot lately. "Fine. We'll go back to Michigan."

Dean stood up, and unconsciously rubbed his right arm, which Sam caught him doing. Before Sam could give him the puppy eyes, Dean turned away.

It was funny, but now he was looking back to that Lucifer universe kind of fondly. At least that was a problem he managed to solve.

* * *

The End


End file.
